1280 WWW.CROPS.ORG CROP SCIENCE, VOL. 55, MAY– JUNE 2015 RESEARCH I n the Mediterranean environment, durum wheat (Triticum turgidum var. durum) exhibits an unstable grain size and weight, and an increase in the grain weight is generally accompanied by a pronounced decrease in the grain N concentration (Cossani et al., 2011). The early assessment of harvest characteristics and the mon- itoring of crop production are being researched for many years at Integration of Remote Sensing and Crop Modeling for the Early Assessment of Durum Wheat Harvest at the Field Scale Francesca Orlando,* Anna Dalla Marta, Marco Mancini, Ray Motha, John J. Qu, and Simone Orlandini ABSTRACT In the Mediterranean, durum wheat is one of the major crops, but a high variability of grain yield and protein concentration (GPC) prevents an adequate agronomic planning at the farm or consortium level. Although there are many stud- ies on monitoring of crop production and early prediction of yields, little has been done at the local scale. The aim of this study was to assess simplifed integration algorithms (SIAs) for inte- grating remote sensing information with a crop model, to forecast the GPC and grain yield at the feld scale. To this end, the CERES-Wheat model was run to simulate the seasonal aver- age of grain yield (AVE) and GPC in Val d’ Orcia (Tuscany Region, Italy) during the 2009–2010 and 2010–2011 growing seasons. The perfor- mances of different vegetation indices from MODIS imagery in harvest forecasting were assessed and compared. The SIA formulation was based on the simulated AVE and GPC, and on their spatialization in relation to the intraan- nual variability between the felds described by vegetation indices. The simulated AVE traced the observed trend. The fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation (fPAR) was the best index in describing grain yield, and the related SIA showed at validation good perfor- mance at the feld scale (r 2 = 0.74). Conversely, the SIA was unable to predict GPC due to the low performance of CERES-Wheat in capturing the interannual variability and to the failure of the fPAR in describing the GPC inter felds variability at intermediate canopy refectance values. F. Orlando, Dep. of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Produc- tion, Landscape, and Agroenergy, CASSANDRA Lab., Univ. of Milan, Via Celoria 2 – 20133 Milan, Italy; A. Dalla Marta, Dep. of Agrifood Production and Environmental Sciences, Univ. of Florence, Piazzale delle Cascine 18 – 50144 Florence, Italy; M. Mancini, and S. Orlan- dini, Foundation for Climate and Sustainability, Via Caproni 8 – 50145 Florence, Italy; R. Motha, and J. Qu, Global Environment and Natu- ral Resources Institute (GENRI), George Mason Univ., Fairfax, VA 22030. Received 9 July 2014. Accepted 11 Dec. 2014. *Corresponding author (francesca.orlando@unimi.it). Abbreviations: AVE, seasonal average grain yield simulated by CERES-Wheat initialized without detailed input data; CF, correc- tion factor for the under/overestimation error; CRM, coefcient of residual mass; DM, dry matter; EF, model efciency; fPAR, fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation; EVI, enhanced vegetation index; GPC, grain protein concentration; LAI, leaf area index; NDVI, normalized diference vegetation index; RRMSE, relative root mean square error; SIA, simplifed integration algorithms between remotely sensed vegetation index and CERES-Wheat output; VId, the vegeta- tion index deviation of each feld from the vegetation index spatial aver- age; Yd, grain yield deviation of each feld from the seasonal grain yield average; YIELD, forecasted grain yield at the feld scale; YIELDcorr, forecasted grain yield at the feld scale corrected for the under/overesti- mation error; YIELD obs , observed grain yield at the feld scale. Published in Crop Sci. 55:1280–1289 (2015). doi: 10.2135/cropsci2014.07.0479 © Crop Science Society of America | 5585 Guilford Rd., Madison, WI 53711 USA All rights reserved. No part of this periodical may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Permission for printing and for reprinting the material contained herein has been obtained by the publisher.