Crop yield prediction based on reanalysis and crop phenology data in the agroclimatic zones

Abstract

Crop yield and phenological stages are remarkably sensitive to not only environmental factors like atmospheric conditions and the physical properties of soils but also agricultural activities like irrigation and fertilizer. Accurate crop yield prediction plays a crucial role in food security and agricultural sustainability. There are several approaches that a wide range of researchers have tried to predict crop yield at different scales. In this study, we tested AgERA5 reanalysis product and crop phenological stage data to predict winter wheat yields in the agricultural lands of the agroclimatic regions of Türkiye. The main objective is to propose a deep learning approach based on the combination of the reanalysis, which was extracted for the agricultural lands of the five most productive agroclimatic zones, and crop phenology data to predict winter wheat yields. We also show the impact of crop phenological stages on crop yield prediction as input. Three performance indicators, such as normalized root mean squared error (NRMSE), mean absolute percentage error (MAPE), and root mean squared error (RMSE) are chosen to test the model’s accuracy and effectiveness. We have obtained promising findings and suggested that AgERA5 reanalysis data can be used as an input for the crop yield prediction of winter wheat with an error below 10%. In addition, it was determined that the inclusion of the crop calendar of winter wheat in the prediction approach increased the model’s performance by 10–40%.