The SALUS Model
The mechanistic crop and environment model that CIBO uses for simulations is called SALUS (system approach for land use sustainability). SALUS is capable of simulating the performance of various crops at many scales to help farmers decide the best management practice to use on their fields. SALUS is able to simulate the effects of crop rotation, land management strategies, and weather on crop growth and yield, soil organic matter, nitrogen dynamics, and heat balance.
The initial version of SALUS was developed at Michigan State University by CIBO co-founder Bruno Basso and has been the subject of 20 years of testing across hundreds of fields in 46 countries, more than 25 PhD dissertations, over 230 peer-reviewed journal articles, and thousands of academic citations. CIBO has an exclusive commercial license to SALUS which it has continuously been improving, expanding to new crops, and scaling to address practical needs of agriculture from subfield to continental scales.