Most typical maize and soybean crop systems were: 2-y soybean-maize (with one crop per year) and 1-y soybean-maize (‘safrinha'). In the latter, soybean is planted with the onset of rains in October and matures in January. Maize is planted after soybean harvest. The rainy season ends before maize maturity, leading to terminal drought in most years. For maize, we simulated both safra and safrinha when both accounted for >30% of maize area within each buffer; if not, only the most dominant maize system was simulated in each buffer. For each crop-RWS combination, each crop sequence x soil type combination was simulated, and then weighted by their relative proportion to retrieve an average Yw at the level of the RWS buffer zone (or Yp in the case of irrigated rice). Simulations assumed no limitations to crop growth by nutrients and no incidence of biotic stresses such as weeds, insect pests, and pathogens.

There are two dominant rice systems: irrigated lowland rice (southern brazil) and rainfed upland rice (north-central and western Brazil). Rice is grown as a single crop per year; in southern Brazil rice is sown from late September to early December and with the onset of rainfall (typically between early November and early December) in north-central Brazil rice is planted. In all cases, rice is direct seeded.

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Cooper, M., Mendes, L.M.S., Silva, W.L.C., Sparovek, G., 2005. A national soil profile database for Brazil available to international scientists. Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J. 69, 649-652. Bouman, B.A.M.; Kropff, M.J.; Tuong, T.P.; Wopereis, M.C.S.; Ten Berge, H.F.M.; Laar van, H.H, 2004. Van. Oryza 2000: modeling lowland rice. Manila, Philippines: International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). 245 pp. Annual crop production area in Brazil occupies 69 million ha. Major crops are soybean, maize, sugarcane, and rice which account for 90% of total crop area, and (except for rice) the country is one of the largest producers and exporters of these crops. Most sugarcane, soybean, and maize is produced in rainfed conditions (>90%); rice is produced in irrigated (80%) and rainfed (20%) conditions in the southern and north-central regions, respectively.

Van Wart, J., Grassini, P., Yang, H.S., Claessens, L., Jarvis, A., Cassman, K.G., 2015 Creating long-term weather data from the thin air for crop simulation modelling. Agric. For. Meteoro. 209-210, 45-58. Jones, J.W., Hoogenboom, G., Porter, C.H., Boote, K.J., Batchelor, W.D., Hunt, L.A., Wilkens, P.W., Singh, U., Gijsman, A.J., Ritchie, J.T., 2003. The DSSAT Cropping System Model. Eur. J. Agron. 18, 235–265. Duarte, Y.C.N., Sentelhas, P.C., 2019. NASA / POWER and DailyGridded weather datasets — how good they are for estimating maize yields in Brazil ? Int. J. Biometeorol. doi: 10.1007/s00484-019-01810-1 Allen, R.G., Luis, S.P., RAES, D., Smith, M., 1998. FAO Irrigation and Drainage Paper No.56. Crop Evapotranspiration, Rome, Italy Radambrasil Project. 1973–1986. Levantamento de recursos naturais. Vol. 1–34. Inst. Brasileiro Geogr. Estatıstica, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.Inman-Bamber, N.G., 1991. A growth model for sugarcane based on a simple carbon balance and the CERES-Maize water balance. S. Afr. J. Plant Soil 8, 93–99. Table 1. Average (2015-2019) total production, harvested area, and average yield of soybean, maize, sugarcane and rice in Brazil. Source: CONAB.

Monteiro, L.A., Sentelhas, C., Pedra, G.U., 2018. Assessment of NASA / POWER satellite-based weather system for Brazilian conditions and its impact on sugarcane yield simulation. Int. J. Climatol. 38, 1571–1581. Management practices for each RWS buffer zone were retrieved from local EMBRAPA agronomists and other experts. Requested information include: dominant crop rotations and proportion of each of them to the total harvested area, sowing window, dominant cultivar name and maturity, and optimal plant population density (CONAB, 2019). The provided data were subsequently corroborated by other local and national experts. Heinemann, A. B., Ramirez-Villegas, J., Rebolledo, M. C., Neto, G. M. F. C., & Castro, A. P., 2019. Upland rice breeding led to increased drought sensitivity in Brazil. Field Crops Research 231, 57-67.A weighted average yield was calculated based on the average yield reported for the municipalities located within the buffer zone and the relative contribution of each department to the total crop harvested area in the buffer zone. Reported Yw (or Yp for irrigated rice) in the Atlas are long-term averages. Yield gap (Yg) was calculated as the difference between long-term average Yw (rainfed crops) or Yp (irrigated crops) and average (2012-2017) farmer yield. Including more years before 2012 in the calculation of average actual yield would have led to a biased estimate of average actual yield due to a strong technology trend in Brazil. In the case of buffers where both safra and safrinha were common maize, average maize yield was estimated by averaging their respective average yields, weighting by the proportion of maize area under each crop system. Marin, F. R. Jones, J. W. Royce, F. 2011. Parameterization and Evaluation of Predictions of DSSAT/CANEGRO for Brazilian Sugarcane. Agron. J. 103, 297-303. Marin, F.R.; Thorburn, P.; Nassif, D.S.P.; Costa, L.G. 2015. Sugarcane model intercomparison: Structural differences and uncertainties under current and potential future climates. Environmental Modelling & Software, 72, 372-386. Data from the Atlas is available for use under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Franchini, J.C., Antonio, A., Junior, B., Debiasi, H., Nepomuceno, A.L., 2017. Root growth of soybean cultivars under different water availability conditions Crescimento radicular de cultivares de soja em campo em diferentes disponibilidades hídricas. Ciências Agrárias, Londrina, 38, 715–724.

Pivetta, L.A., G. Castoldi, G. Santos, and C.A. Rosolem. 2011. Soybean root growth and activity as affected by the production system. Pesquisa Agropecu. Bras. 46, 1547–1554. Tomasella, J, Hodnett, MG, Rossato, L, 2000. Pedotransfer functions for the estimation of soil water retention in Brazilian soils. Soil Sci Soc Am J 69, 649-652.The 1-3 dominant soil series were identified for each RWS buffer based on data from the Radambrasil project (see Cooper et al., 2005). In each buffer, dominant soils were selected to cover at least 30%. Each selected soil had at least 10% of the area. Selected soils were verified by local experts and modified as needed to ensure that simulated soils represented the most common agricultural soils. Marin, FR, Jones, JW, Singles, A., Royce, F., Assad, E.D., Pellegrino, G.Q., Justino, F., 2012. Climate change impacts on sugarcane attainable yield in southern Brazil. Climatic Change 117, 227-239. Most part of Brazil has a favorable climate for rainfed crop production, with total annual rainfall that ranges, across the major producing regions, from 700 mm (northeast region) to 2100 mm (south, southeast and west region). Precipitation is well distributed during the year in the south (Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, and Parana), while it exhibits strong seasonality in the rest of the producing regions, with wet summers and dry winters. Battisti, R.B., Sentelhas, P.C., 2017. Improvement of soybean resilience to drought through deep root systems in Brazil. Agron. J. 109, 1612–1622.