DEVELOPING, PARAMETERIZING, AND TESTING OF DYNAMIC CROP GROWTH MODELS FOR HORTICULTURAL CROPS

Increasingly precise management of horticultural crops lends itself to the use of mechanistic crop simulation models to predict growth and yield.
In this paper, we encourage systematic approaches for developing, parameterizing, and testing of dynamic crop growth models for horticultural crops.
Using the CROPGRO model as an example, we describe crop development, photosynthesis, leaf area expansion, as well as the addition, growth, and maturation of individual fruits.
An algorithm is described for predicting fruit fresh weight, size, and dry matter concentration from dry matter growth and physiological age of individual tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.) fruits.
Parameterizing crop models for response to climatic factors, especially temperature, requires interpretive use of literature information, along with testing against growth data from a range of growth conditions.
A review of tomato literature for temperature dependencies of processes is presented with a view to how this information would be used to parameterize the CROPGRO-tomato model.

III International Symposium on Models for Plant Growth, Environmental Control and Farm Management in Protected Cultivation (HortiModel 2006)

K.J. Boote, J.M.S. Scholberg

crop modeling, model parameterization, temperature, tomato, fruit growth, fresh weight, fruit size

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2006.718.1