Grain yield reliability analysis with crop water demand uncertainty

A new method of reliability analysis for crop water production function is presented considering crop water demand uncertainty. The procedure uses an advanced first-order second moment (AFOSM) method in evaluating the crop yield failure probability. To determine the variance and the mean of actual evapotranspiration as the component of interest for AFOSM analysis, an explicit stochastic optimization model for optimal irrigation scheduling is developed based on the first and second-order moment analysis of the soil moisture state variables. As a result of the study, the violation probabilities of crop yield at different levels were computed from AFOSM method. Also using the optimization results and the double bounded density function estimation methodology, the weekly soil moisture density function is derived which can be used as a short term reliability index. The proposed approach does not involve any discretization of system variables. The results of reliability analysis and optimization model compare favorably with those obtained from simulation.