Crop rotation scheduling with adjacency constraints

• Published in: Annals of operations research Vol. 190; no. 1; pp. 165 - 180
• Main Authors: dos Santos, Lana Mara Rodrigues, Michelon, Philippe, Arenales, Marcos Nereu, Santos, Ricardo Henrique Silva
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Boston Springer US 01-10-2011; Springer; Springer Nature B.V; Springer Verlag
• Subjects: Analysis; Business and Management; Combinatorics; Computer Science; Crop rotation; Cropping systems; Crops; Fertilizers; Income distribution; Integer programming; Linear programming; Mathematical analysis; Mathematical models; Occupation; Operations research; Operations Research/Decision Theory; Optimization; Planting; Scheduling; Studies; Sustainability; Theory of Computation; Integer linear programming; Column generation; Crop rotation
• ISSN: 0254-5330; 1572-9338
• DOI: 10.1007/s10479-008-0478-z

In this article we propose a 0-1 optimization model to determine a crop rotation schedule for each plot in a cropping area. The rotations have the same duration in all the plots and the crops are selected to maximize plot occupation. The crops may have different production times and planting dates. The problem includes planting constraints for adjacent plots and also for sequences of crops in the rotations. Moreover, cultivating crops for green manuring and fallow periods are scheduled into each plot. As the model has, in general, a great number of constraints and variables, we propose a heuristics based on column generation. To evaluate the performance of the model and the method, computational experiments using real-world data were performed. The solutions obtained indicate that the method generates good results.