Joost van Heerwaarden

Joost van Heerwaarden is an Assistant Professor in Plant Production Systems at Wageningen University & Research. His research focuses on agricultural sustainability, statistical modeling in agriculture, and optimizing crop management practices in Sub-Saharan Africa and tropical regions. He specializes in fertilizer recommendations, crop-nutrient interactions, and leveraging citizen science for decentralized farming solutions.

Key areas include: (1) Developing spatial and statistical models for crop productivity (e.g., spatial autoregressive graphical models and copula methods), (2) Evaluating fertilizer efficiency in cocoa and grain legumes, (3) Promoting participatory approaches like the Tricot framework for on-farm testing, and (4) Studying rhizobia-legume symbiosis to enhance nitrogen fixation in African soils.

He collaborates widely across institutions such as the University of Groningen and CGIAR centers. His work addresses food security challenges through predictive analytics, precision agriculture, and bridging gaps between scientific research and smallholder farmer needs.

Notable projects include the Food Security Intelligence initiative and contributions to the N2Africa project promoting nitrogen fixation technologies. His datasets and models are publicly accessible via platforms like FigShare and GitHub.