Modeling maize cropping systems in tropical environments: evapotranspiration, irrigation requirements and adaptations to climate change scenarios

• Ano de defesa: 2025
• Autor(a) principal: Dias, Taís Souza dos Santos
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: eng
• Instituição de defesa: Biblioteca Digitais de Teses e Dissertações da USP
• Palavras-chave em Português: Zea mays; Adaptação genética; Agricultural modeling; DSSAT; Evapotranspiração; Evapotranspiration; Genetic adaptation; Modelagem agrícola; Produtividade da água; Water productivity
• Link de acesso: https://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/11/11152/tde-07052025-153909/

Population growth is imminent, and with the scenario of global warming, global food security will be compromised in the coming decades. For this reason, it is essential to establish strategies to better comprehend the behavior of crops, focusing on mitigating the adverse impacts on agricultural production. Thus, the present study aimed to evaluate the behavior of maize crops using the CERES-Maize model as a prediction tool, with the following specific objectives: (i) to assess evapotranspiration combined with methods of soil water evaporation under irrigated and rainfed cultivation conditions; (ii) to evaluate climate change scenarios maximum and minimum temperatures, precipitation, and evapotranspiration in future scenarios; (iii) to assess the crop cycle for the current genetic coefficients (P1 and P5) and with synthetically corrected coefficients; (iv) to evaluate the average grain yield and water productivity; (v) to assess the risk of average yield in future scenarios. Chapter 2 focuses on analyzing evapotranspiration and water productivity of the maize crop in tropical environments, using the CERES-Maize model as a tool. The results revealed that the combination of the Priestly-Taylor method associated with the Ritchie method in two stages achieved better performance in simulating daily and cumulative evapotranspiration and water productivity, using observed data from experiments conducted in Piracicaba-SP and Serra Talhada-PE. Meanwhile, Chapter 3 investigates the behavior of maize crops in the face of climate change scenarios, addressing grain productivity, water productivity, and evapotranspiration. The study identified that the increase in temperature reduces the crop cycle and adaptation strategies, such as the synthetic correction of the cycle to extend it, allow for increased grain productivity, which becomes a mitigation strategy. Additionally, homogeneous zones that showed increased grain productivity will demonstrate increased water productivity and a reduction in evapotranspiration, which allows us to assert that the crop will have a more efficient use of water under future climate scenarios.