ECOFI: a database of sugar and energy cane field trials

Abstract

Agroecological studies on sugarcane dealing with genotype by environment by management interactions commonly generate complex datasets. To facilitate the use of these datasets, a relational database, named ECOFI, was designed from the analysis of the content and the structure datasets of multidisciplinary experiments with sugarcane and energy cane. The database described in this paper includes data from 58 trials carried out in 11 countries from 1986 to 2016, including 24 trials in Reunion Islands and 15 in Guadeloupe. Taking into account plots within the trials and crop cycle, it includes 725 crop cycles in total, with 60 different cultivars. The datasets contain data for crop observations (e.g. dry mass), soil (water contents), weather (all essential meteorological parameters) and management (sowing, cultivars and harvest). Additionally the datasets contain metadata to qualify observations. This dataset provides an adequate experimental set to calibrate or validate crop model simulations under genotype x environment interaction.