About

1) Step One – Registration Form. Each member of your team MUST register on this form by Dec 14th, 2024 to participate in the competition. Teams of one are permitted. 

• Any individual or team can participate. One individual must be designated as team leader and all team members must register on the “Step One” form above.
• Each individual can be involved in only one team/entry. You cannot be on multiple teams.
• Companies or individuals are encouraged to participate.
• In order to win and receive the cash prize, participants must commit to publishing (or allowing us to publish) their models with open public access after the competition.
• Competition participants agree to have their models and results included in a joint publication on which they will be co-authors if they desire. The organizers reserve the right to include or exclude participants based on the quality and creativity of their submissions.
• If you have a model that is proprietary or you would prefer not to share, you are still encouraged to participate but will not be eligible to win or be an author on the joint publication. All data you submit to EvalAI (which does not include your code since only predictions are uploaded) is considered public and may therefore be used in the manuscript.
• The joint publication will be delayed for up to one year from the submission date to allow participants to author their own publications on their models if desired.

• To ensure fairness, G2F cooperator labs will be required to designate one or more individuals to take care of their 2024 data. These individuals will be ineligible to participate in this competition.

• Competition participants from G2F cooperator labs can help gather the data in field, but only the designated individual(s) in that lab is allowed to access that data.

• The organizers reserve the right to disqualify any participants from the competition if they judge that participant to have cheated or attempted to improperly gain an unfair advantage over others.

• Submission MUST use the “Public” option under submission visibility on EvalAI. While the “Private” option is available on the interface, only submissions using the “Public” option will be considered. Making your submissions private (hiding the score from the other teams) and then changing them to public later in the competition is grounds for disqualification.

• A member of the winning team is expected and encouraged to present their results at the 2025 Maize Genetics Meeting or a pre-meeting in St Louis, MO, USA.

• Any modeling strategy is permitted!
• G2F will provide registered participants with trial data from 2014-2023 for use in model development. G2F will also provide participants with weather and other test set input data from the 2024 growing season.
• Any other data which were publicly and freely available by February 1, 2024 are permitted and encouraged for use in model development. Data that became publicly available after February 1, 2024 is not permissible (with the exception of any DOI releases from the G2F initiative itself).

• Participants will be provided with the G2F data from 2014-2023 for use in developing and training their models. This will include Phenotypic data (yield), Field GPS locations, Weather data, Soil data, Genotypic data. Data will become available at this link on November 15, 2024 Competition Data Sets.
• Test set input information will also be provided for use in generating the predictions for submission and evaluation. This will include: 2024 Field locations, Field information, Genotypic data, and Weather data.
• By the submission deadline participants will submit:
  • Final predictions of absolute grain yield for each hybrid in each test environment in Mg/ha adjusted to 15.5% moisture. A template document will be provided for participants to submit these results. Submissions for the leader board can be made prior to the deadline and the highest scoring prediction from each team will be used for the final evaluation.
• While not included in the results submission, participants should be prepared to provide their well organized code and any non-G2F provided data they have used upon request of the organizers. The organizers must be provided sufficient information to re-run the model themselves and validate the results if desired. Participants who desire to keep their model proprietary will not be required to provide this information, but they will not be eligible to win the competition or the cash prize.
• The winner will be determined based on having the highest average Pearson Correlation Coefficient (r). This will be determined as follows:
  • Pearson r values will be calculated on a per location bases between the participant’s submission and the observed 2024 data.
  • These location r values will be averaged for a single representative r value for the submission.
  • The team with the highest average Pearson r wins!
• Other ways of evaluating the models will also be employed for publication purposes, but they will not be used to determine the winner of the competition.
• Some locations or hybrids from the 2024 year may fail or have extremely low or unusual values. The organizers may drop locations and/or hybrids in these cases. If that occurs, the corresponding predicted value from the participant will also be dropped prior to evaluation.

• The winning team will receive:
  • A cash award of $4,000 or equivalent compensation (generously donated by the National Corn Growers Association, www.ncga.com, and the Iowa Corn Growers’ Association, www.iowacorn.org). We will do our best to provide this prize to the winning team (i.e., through check, bank transfer, etc.) but cannot guarantee this will be possible in every country. It is the winner’s responsibility to pay any bank transfer fees and applicable taxes.
  • An invitation and expectation to present their model and results at the 2025 Maize Genetics Conference and/or a pre-meeting session help by the G2F.
  • Expenses paid (up to $1,200) for the 2025 conference (for one member of the team only).
  • Invitation to be the first author on the joint G2F competition publication if desired.

• Jacob Washburn: Research Geneticist, USDA-ARS.
• Qiuyue Chen: Researcher, University of Wisconsin-Madison
• David Ertl: Iowa Corn Growers’ Association.
• Joseph Gage: Assistant Professor, North Carolina State University.
• James Holland: Research Geneticist, USDA-ARS.
• Dayane Lima: Researcher, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
• Natalia de Leon: Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
• Seth Murray: Professor, Texas A&M University
• Cinta Romay: Project Manager, Cornell University.
• Alencar Xavier: Breeding Analyst, Corteva Agriscience

For competition questions, please first check for an answer at Maize GxE Prediction Google Group If you cannot find an answer please submit your question to the google group or maizegxeprediction@gmail.com