Mourad Latati

Soil-crop models are widely used as tools to evaluate the combined effects of cropping practices, soil management and climate on the agro-environmental indicators and agroecosystem performance. They provide a wide range of predictive information that is useful to design and co-evaluate innovative cropping system intercropping cereals-legumes). However, intercropping modeling is still under development to better take into account the various interactions between crops. The present project targets the calibration and validation of a new version of the STICS soil-crop model recently improved to simulate consistently a wide range of bi-specific annual intercrops. The main objective will aim to test and evaluate this new version on two (i.e. chickpea-durum wheat and forage pea-barley intercropping) legume-based intercropping systems that are commonly practiced by Algerian farmers under contrasted pedoclimatic and cropping practices conditions. The new version of STIC will be tested according to the following steps (i) first evaluation (without parameterization) for sole cropped species by using existing data on both legumes and cereals in monoculture; (ii) parameterization within the collected data on monoculture system and then (iii) direct validation to evaluate the prediction on intercropping system without re-parameterization. The relevance and validity domain for simulating intercropping by the new version of STICS will be compared to results obtained using the previous standard version of STICS (V9.2).

In the context of applying artificial intelligence (AI) in agriculture to make more profound, localized decisions in managing both crop and soil resources, Mourad Latati will have extensive access to and use of digital materials (e.g., software, program codes, models, and modeling platforms) and intellectual resources. This will significantly enhance his skills (e.g., soil-crop modeling) and knowledge. This initiative will foster interactions between the fellow and French research clusters (INRAE/CIRAD UMR Eco&Sols and CIRAD UMRs AIDA). Mourad LATATI has the opportunity to work directly with the newly developed version of the STICS-intercrop model (Beta version: 11) under two types of cereal-legume intercropping systems. He will interact directly with six researchers from CIRAD and INRAE, who are considered experts in the field of STICS modeling. The fellowship also provides immediate opportunities to use practical information, which will be disseminated through open-access scientific publications by the fellow and INRAE-CIRAD researchers involved in the research project. Additionally, results will be presented at conferences and workshops.