CALIBRATION OF THE CROPWAT MODEL FOR THE STUDY OF SOYBEAN PRODUCTION SYSTEMS

ABSTRACT CROPWAT is a model that uses water balance to study the water factor and productivity in production systems. In this sense, this study aimed to calibrate the CROPWAT for modeling rainfed and irrigated soybean production systems. Climate and soil data from a soybean-producing region in the south of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil, were used to implementing simulations in nine agricultural years, and crop shortfalls were calculated and compared with reference data. Statistical indices were applied to evaluate the performance of the model in its calibration. For validation, two field trials with 12 cultivars were implemented under irrigation and rainfed and the mean productivity in each water management was compared with the CROPWAT estimate by Student’s t-test. Accuracy (r) was 0.976 (“very strong”), precision (r2) was equivalent to 95.3%, and the indices of agreement (d) and performance (c) were considered excellent (0.95 and 0.93, respectively) in the calibration. Validation demonstrated that the hypothesis that CROPWAT correctly estimated soybean productivity under irrigated and rainfed systems cannot be rejected at 1 or 5% significance levels.