David MakowskiFrench National Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment (INRAE) | INRAE
David Makowski
PhD
Statistical modelling in biology, agro-ecology, the environment, and food safety
About
488
Publications
151,111
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
15,253
Citations
Introduction
My main interests are in agroecology, agronomy, environmental sciences, climate change, and mathematical modelling.
See my full list of publication at:
https://scholar.google.fr/citations?user=vcnWi7IAAAAJ&hl=fr
Additional affiliations
Education
January 2006 - June 2007
September 1993 - January 2001
Publications
Publications (488)
The European Commission requested the EFSA Panel on Plant Health to prepare and deliver risk assessments for commodities listed in Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2018/2019 as ‘High risk plants, plant products and other objects’. This Scientific Opinion covers plant health risks posed by plants of Betula pendula and B. pubescens imported fr...
Context: Shifting the sowing date has been proposed as a simple agronomic lever to enhance crop establishment, growth, and yield, which could be a climate change adaptation strategy.
Objective or research question: Previous research showed that the experimental data assessing the effect of sowing date are not consistent and vary between trials an...
In the last two decades, an exponentially growing number of meta-analyses (MAs) synthesize thousands of peer-reviewed studies on the environmental impacts of farming practices (FPs). This paper describes the iMAP-FP evidence library, a comprehensive dataset on the effects of 34 categories of FPs (such as agronomic practices, cropping and livestock...
This research introduces a new method for predicting changes in corn yield and price, critical for food security. Instead of relying on difficult-to-access pre-harvest production data, our approach uses satellite-derived Gross Primary Production (GPP) data and dimension-reduction techniques to forecast national corn yield and price changes. We cond...
→ This brief reports the results of a systematic review on the effects of 34 farming practices on water management in agriculture (i.e. water use efficiency, water consumption, soil water retention, water quality and nutrients leaching and run-off).
→ The analysis identifies 10 farming practices that are potentially beneficial to reduce water use q...
This study presents a novel approach for forecasting corn yield and price variations on a large scale, using exclusively satellite-derived Gross Primary Production (GPP) data with a native resolution of 0.05°. Dimensionality reduction techniques are implemented to extract relevant latent features from the high-dimensional GPP datasets. These featur...
The optimal allocation of crops to different parcels of land is a problem of paramount practical importance, not only to improve production, but also to address the challenges posed by climate change. However, this optimization problem is inherently complex, characterized by a vast search space that renders traditional optimization techniques impra...
Many countries have implemented policies to reduce the use of chemical inputs in agriculture. However, these policies face many obstacles that limit their effectiveness. The purpose of this paper is to review the main challenges associated with reducing chemical inputs in agriculture and to propose potential solutions. Our analysis, based on a lite...
Elevated temperatures during the flowing stage can induce spikelet sterility in rice, posing a major threat to production under climate change. Projecting the impacts and developing effective strategies are critical, but our understanding of regional, seasonal, and long-term trends in rice heat exposure remains limited. Previous studies on spikelet...
Management practices that increase the surface albedo of cultivated land could mitigate climate change, with similar effectiveness to practices that reduce greenhouse gas emissions or favor natural CO2 sequestration. Yet, the efficiency of such practices is barely quantified. In this study, we quantified the impacts of seven different management pr...
During extensive periods without rain, known as dry-downs, decreasing soil moisture (SM) induces plant water stress at the point when it limits evapotranspiration, defining a critical SM threshold (θcrit). Better quantification of θcrit is needed for improving future projections of climate and water resources, food production, and ecosystem vulnera...
High-dimensional climate data collected on a daily, monthly, or seasonal time step are now commonly used to predict crop yields worldwide with standard statistical models or machine learning models. Since the use of all available individual climate variables generally leads to calculation problems, over-fitting, and over-parameterization, it is nec...
Several approaches based on process-based, statistical or economic models have been developed and are currently used by market analysts and governmental agencies to forecast agricultural yields and commodity prices at the national and global scales. However, these models require input data that are often difficult to obtain before crop harvest and...
Aim
Agriculture depends heavily on biodiversity, yet unsustainable management practices continue to affect a wide range of organisms and ecosystems at unprecedented levels worldwide. Addressing the global challenge of biodiversity loss requires access to consolidated knowledge across management practices, spatial levels, and taxonomic groups.
Loca...
Natural gas is the primary fuel used in U.S. residences, yet little is known about its consumption patterns and drivers. We use daily county-level gas consumption data to assess the spatial patterns of the relationships and the sensitivities of gas consumption to outdoor air temperature across U.S. households. We fitted linear-plus-plateau function...
Following a request from the European Commission, the EFSA Panel on Plant Health performed a quantitative risk assessment for the EU of Retithrips syriacus (Mayet) (Thysanoptera: Thripidae), a polyphagous thrips, regarded as a tropical/subtropical pest occurring in several countries of Africa, South America, Asia and in the EU in Cyprus. The curren...
Early and accurate crop yield predictions and prices are crucial for food security management and planning. However, the lack of pre-harvest data poses significant challenges, undermining the reliability and effectiveness of existing methods.
This study introduces an innovative approach that addresses these challenges using satellite data products—...
This study introduces an innovative method for forecasting corn yield and price variations, critical for food security and strategic planning. Unlike traditional methods reliant on pre-harvest production data, which are often difficult to access, our approach utilizes satellite-derived gross primary production (GPP) data and dimension-reduction tec...
Myzus persicae (Sulzer), commonly known as the green peach aphid, plays a pivotal role in transmitting a range of yellowing viruses, including beet yellows virus, beet mild yellowing virus, beet chlorosis virus, and beet mosaic virus, to sugar beet plants (Beta vulgaris L.). Because of their environmental impacts, three neonicotinoid-based products...
Climate change has a significant impact on rice grain appearance quality; in particular, high temperatures during the grain filling period increase the rate of chalky immature grains, reducing the marketability of rice. Heat-tolerant cultivars have been bred and released to reduce the rate of chalky grain and improve rice quality under high tempera...
Climate change-induced precipitation anomalies during extremely wet years (EWYs) result in substantial nitrogen losses to aquatic ecosystems (N w). Still, the extent and drivers of these losses, and effective mitigation strategies have remained unclear. By integrating global datasets with well-established crop modeling and machine learning techniqu...
In Europe, the heterogeneous features of crop systems with majority of small to medium sized agricultural holdings, and diversity of crop rotations, require high-resolution information to estimate cropland Net Ecosystem Exchange (NEE) and its two main components of Gross Ecosystem Exchange (GEE) and the Ecosystem Respiration (R ECO). In this contex...
Yield gaps, here defined as the difference between actual and attainable yields, provide a framework for assessing opportunities to increase agricultural productivity. Previous global assessments, centred on a single year, were unable to identify temporal variation. Here we provide a spatially and temporally comprehensive analysis of yield gaps for...
High-dimensional climate data collected on a daily, monthly or seasonal time step are now commonly used to predict crop yields worldwide with standard statistical models or machine learning models. Since the use of all available individual climate variables generally leads to calculation problems, over-fitting, and over-parameterization, it is nece...
Crop yield stability is key for food security. However, little is known about whether recent technological advances are sufficient to stabilize yields against seasonal climate variability and extremes under climate change. Using a grid yield dataset, we found that from 2001 to 2020, the standard deviation (SD) of yield anomalies for maize, rice, wh...
Terrestrial vegetation emits vast amounts of monoterpenes into the atmosphere, influencing ecological interactions and atmospheric chemistry. Global emissions are simulated as a function of temperature with a fixed exponential relationship (β coefficient) across forest ecosystems and environmental conditions. We applied meta-analysis algorithms on...
Elevated temperatures during the flowing stage contribute to heat-induced spikelet sterility in rice, posing a major threat to production considering climate change projections. Developing effective strategies for stable rice production through breeding and crop management is critical; however, our understanding of regional, seasonal, and long-term...
The EU imports large quantities of soybeans, mainly for livestock feed. However, there is a trend to increase domestic soybean production and reduce imports. In this study, we investigate the potential impact of an increased EU soybean cultivation on evapotranspiration (ET), water deficit, and irrigation needs. We focus on the consequences of repla...
In this study, we investigate and forecast the impact of crop production shocks on the global prices of three major international agricultural commodities: maize, soybeans, and cocoa. We perform a thorough assessment of the forecasting performances of five econometric and machine learning (ML) models using 60 years of data. First, we train the mode...
Le Programme National de Recherche et d'Innovation (PNRI) vise à identifier des solutions opérationnelles pour gérer la jaunisse de la betterave sucrière. Plusieurs essais ont été mis en place, dans un réseau de parcelles d'agriculteurs situé au nord de la France, afin d'évaluer l'intérêt des plantes compagnes. Trois espèces ont été testées : avoin...
Sustainability science needs new approaches to produce, share, and use knowledge because there are major barriers to translating research into policy and practice. Multiple actors hold relevant knowledge for sustainability including indigenous and local people who have developed over generations knowledge, methods, and practices that biodiversity a...
Future European agriculture should achieve high productivity while limiting its impact on the environment. Legume-supported crop rotations could contribute to these goals, as they request less nitrogen (N) fertilizer inputs, show high resource use efficiency and support biodiversity. However, legumes grown for their grain (pulses) are not widely cu...
Double cropping can help reduce the risk of food insecurity by harvesting two crops each year instead of one. Byincreasing the rate of plant development and shortening growing seasons, global warming is likely to favour this typeof system in areas where it is not yet being applied. Here we assess the probability of success of double croppingmaize a...
Statistical synthesis of data sets (meta-analysis, MA) has become a popular approach for providing scientific evidence to inform environmental and agricultural policy. As the number of published MAs is increasing exponentially, multiple MAs are now often available on a specific topic, delivering sometimes conflicting conclusions. To synthesise seve...
The impact of climate change on agricultural yields is generally quantified using biophysical models, which finely describe the functioning of plants and their biological and physical interactions with their environment. One of the strengths of these models lies in their ability to simulate crop yields as a function of explanatory variables describ...
Les modèles biophysiques ont longtemps été les outils privilégiés pour quantifier l'impact du changement climatique sur les rendements agricoles. Ces modèles décrivent finement le fonctionnement des plantes et leurs interactions biologiques et physiques avec leur environnement. Un des atouts des modèles biophysiques réside dans leur capacité à simu...
Following a request from the European Commission, the EFSA Panel on Plant Health performed a risk assessment of the citrus fruit midge Resseliella citrifrugis (Diptera: Cecidomyiidae), an oligophagous species, which feeds on fruits of Citrus spp., and is reported from China. The pest was temporarily regulated in October 2022 (Regulation (EU) 2022/1...
The identification of sustainable fertilisation practices is essential to reduce agriculture's impact on the environment while insuring sufficient crop production. The use of enhanced efficiency fertilisers (EEFs) is thought to improve nitrogen-fertiliser uptake by crops while reducing nutrient losses to the environment. EEFs' performance has been...
Simulations of crop yield due to climate change vary widely between models, locations, species, management strategies, and Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs). To understand how climate and adaptation affects yield change, we developed a meta‐model based on 8703 site‐level process‐model simulations of yield with different future adaptation...
Background: Climate change, particularly rising temperatures, negatively affects rice grain quality, increasing chalky grain percentage (CG) and hampering rice grade and price. Heat-tolerant cultivars have been bred and released since the 2000s, but the effectiveness of heat tolerance in reducing the occurrence of CG has yet to be quantified.
Objec...
Following a request from the European Commission, the EFSA Panel on Plant Health performed a risk assessment of Citripestis sagittiferella (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae), the citrus pulp borer, an oligophagous pest reported from South-East Asia and restricted to Citrus spp. The entry risk assessment focused on the citrus fruit pathway. Two scenarios were...
Using global wheat trade data and a network model for shock propagation, we study the impact of the Ukrainian crisis on food security. Depending on the level of reduction in Ukrainian wheat exports, the number of additional individuals falling under the minimum dietary energy requirement varies from 1 to 9 millions, and reaches about 4.8 millions f...
Crop diversification has been put forward as a way to reduce the environmental impact of agriculture without penalizing its productivity. In this context, intercropping, the planned combination of two or more crop species in one field, is a promising practice. On an average, intercropping saves land compared with the component sole crops, but it re...
In Africa, different forms of organic agriculture exist, particularly in Cameroon where uncertified natural farming systems have a prominent place. Recognition of such systems by public policies has been limited due to a lack of statistical and experimental data. To address this issue, we use a probabilistic elicitation of expert knowledge to asses...
In order to formulate effective fire-mitigation policies, it is important to understand the spatial and temporal distribution of different types of wildfires and to be able to predict their occurrence taking the main influencing factors into account. The objective of this short communication is to assess the capability of a fast and easy-to-impleme...
Abstract
CONTEXT
Despite recent improvements in living standards, a substantial proportion of farm households in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is food insecure, and increasing crop productivity could help address this problem.
OBJECTIVE
We estimated the effect of increasing maize yields with mineral fertilizer on household food security and on regiona...
Following a request from the European Commission, the EFSA Panel on Plant Health performed a risk assessment of Xanthomonas citri pv. viticola (Xcv). This pest causes bacterial canker of grapevine and is reported from Brazil and India. Two scenarios were considered: scenario A0 (current practice) and A2 (additional control measures). For the fresh...
The internal validity of conclusions about effectiveness or impact in systematic reviews, and of decisions based on them, depends on risk of bias assessments being conducted appropriately. However, a random sample of 50 recently-published articles claiming to be quantitative environmental systematic reviews found 64% did not include any risk of bia...
Following a request from the European Commission, the EFSA Panel on Plant Health performed a pest risk assessment of Amyelois transitella (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae), the navel orangeworm, for the EU. The quantitative assessment considered two scenarios: (i) current practices and (ii) a requirement for chilled transport. The assessment focused on path...
Plant water stress occurs at the point when soil moisture (SM) limits transpiration, defining a critical SM threshold ( crit). Knowledge of the spatial distribution of crit is crucial for future projections of climate and water resources. Here, we use global eddy covariance observations to quantify crit and evaporative fraction (EF) regimes. T...
Aphids can cause significant damage to sugar beet crops. Myzus persicae (Sulzer) (Hempitera: Aphididae), also called green peach aphid, is responsible for transmitting yellows (i.e., beet yellows virus, beet mild yellowing virus, beet chlorosis virus, and beet mosaic virus) to sugar beet (Beta vulgaris Linné) that can substantially decrease crop yi...
Annual food caloric production is the product of caloric yield, cropping frequency (CF, number of production seasons per year) and cropland area. Existing studies have largely focused on crop yield, whereas how CF responds to climate change remains poorly understood. Here, we evaluate the global climate sensitivity of caloric yields and CF at natio...
On-farm research networks (hereafter called OFRN) are managed by groups of farmers conducting trials on their own farms. OFRNs are becoming popular because they allow farmers to assess new management practices under on-farm conditions. Data collected in OFRN can be used to estimate the mean effect of specific cropping practices on crop yields and t...
Apple is one of the most widely cultivated fruit crops world‐wide, and apple yield benefits from pollination by insects. The global decline in wild pollinator populations raises concern about the adequacy of pollination services in apple production.
Here, we present a global meta‐analysis of pollination in apple. We assembled from the literature a...
Terrestrial vegetation emits vast amounts of monoterpenes into the atmosphere, influencing ecological interactions and atmospheric chemistry. Global emissions, mostly driven by responses to abiotic stress, are simulated as a function of temperature with a fixed exponential relationship (β coefficient) across forest ecosystems and environmental cond...
Atmospheric C sequestration in agricultural soils is viewed as one of the most promising negative emission technologies currently available. Nonetheless, it remains unclear how strongly soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks respond to agricultural practices, especially for subsoil. Here, we assess the SOC storage potential in croplands and how the prese...
The determination of critical nitrogen (N) dilution curves (CNDCs) has been the subject of intensive study for the last decades due to its relevance to diagnosing crop N status. However, to date, minimum steps, data requirements and robust science-based guidelines to estimate CNDCs based on experimental data have not been formalized in the literatu...