# Winter wheat yield prediction using convolutional neural networks from environmental and phenological data

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.01282 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.01282/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 12 of its 87 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 4 May 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 12 of 12)

- [XGBoost: A Scalable Tree Boosting System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.02754/) (2016)
- [The many Shapley values for model explanation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.08474/) (2019)
- [Consistent Individualized Feature Attribution for Tree Ensembles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.03888/) (2018)
- [Problems with Shapley-value-based explanations as feature importance measures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.11097/) (2020)
- [Deep learning in agriculture: A survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.11809/) (2018)
- [A CNN-RNN Framework for Crop Yield Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.09045/) (2019)
- [Crop Yield Prediction Using Deep Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.02860/) (2019)
- [Simultaneous Corn and Soybean Yield Prediction from Remote Sensing Data Using Deep Transfer Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.03129/) (2020)
- [Crop Yield Prediction Integrating Genotype and Weather Variables Using Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.13847/) (2020)
- [WheatNet: A Lightweight Convolutional Neural Network for High-throughput Image-based Wheat Head Detection and Counting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.09408/) (2021)
- [Predicting Yield Performance of Parents in Plant Breeding: A Neural Collaborative Filtering Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.09902/) (2020)
- [Maize Yield and Nitrate Loss Prediction with Machine Learning Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.06746/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Adaptive Fusion of Multi-view Remote Sensing data for Optimal Sub-field Crop Yield Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.11844/) (2024)
- [YieldSAT: A Multimodal Benchmark Dataset for High-Resolution Crop Yield Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.00940/) (2026)
- [A Hybrid Deep Learning-based Approach for Optimal Genotype by Environment Selection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.13021/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Crop yield forecasting depends on many interactive factors, including crop genotype, weather, soil, and management practices. This study analyzes the performance of machine learning and deep learning methods for winter wheat yield prediction using an extensive dataset of weather, soil, and crop phenology variables in 271 counties across Germany from 1999 to 2019. We proposed a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) model, which uses a 1-dimensional convolution operation to capture the time dependencies of environmental variables. We used eight supervised machine learning models as baselines and evaluated their predictive performance using RMSE, MAE, and correlation coefficient metrics to benchmark the yield prediction results. Our findings suggested that nonlinear models such as the proposed CNN, Deep Neural Network (DNN), and XGBoost were more effective in understanding the relationship between the crop yield and input data compared to the linear models. Our proposed CNN model outperformed all other baseline models used for winter wheat yield prediction (7 to 14% lower RMSE, 3 to 15% lower MAE, and 4 to 50% higher correlation coefficient than the best performing baseline across test data). We aggregated soil moisture and meteorological features at the weekly resolution to address the seasonality of the data. We also moved beyond prediction and interpreted the outputs of our proposed CNN model using SHAP and force plots which provided key insights in explaining the yield prediction results (importance of variables by time). We found DUL, wind speed at week ten, and radiation amount at week seven as the most critical features in winter wheat yield prediction.