Model-driven engineering applied to crop modeling

•We produced a software prototype for designing conceptual models of crop models.•Its visual language was achieved thanks to model-driven engineering techniques.•Code generation has been used to address an industrial issue met by the ITK Company.•End-to-end testing of our prototype has been achieved on a real production scenario.

At the crossroads of two disciplines, Computer Science and Agronomy, we propose the use of Model-Driven Engineering which has the potential to be the future of software engineering. This work was initiated to tackle issues met by the ITK Company in developing and designing new crop models for decision support systems. We aim in the long-run at a full-fledge crop modeling and simulation environment. The metamodel and graphical concrete syntax designed are overcoming the lack of formal tool for conceptual modeling. The presented prototype permits to improve ITK production process through the use of code generation techniques and the feedback of its industrial use is given.