Abstract
Quantification of the effects of water consumption technologies on sesame performance has not been evaluated by any model yet. Field experiments were conducted to assess the sesame (Sesamum indicum L.) response to limited irrigation in an arid region. Experimental factors were irrigation levels (deficit and full irrigation; DI, FI respectively), application of superabsorbent polymer (SAP) (80 kg ha−1), foliar application of humic acid (HA) (6 kg ha−1), and control which were arranged in the split strip plot design. Sensitivity analysis demonstrated the robustness of the AquaCrop model for simulation of soil water content, sesame canopy cover, and final production. Satisfactory results were obtained for the simulation of biomass (B) (R2 = 0.92, EF = 0.87) and seed yield (SY) (R2 = 0.88, EF = 0.85). NRMSE (%) values for the simulated B (7.3%) and SY (6.9%) along with other model evaluation statistics confirmed the potential of the model for the study application. Model accuracy in simulating water use efficiency (WUE) (R2 = 0.70) and harvest index (HI) (R2 = 0.61) was slightly lower than SY and B. Comparison of the measured and simulated B, HI and WUE obtained for DI+SAP treatments revealed that the application of SAP under DI condition was an efficient approach and a useful alternative to FI at water scarcity conditions. Slight differences between the measured and simulated values of SY, B, HI, and WUE under conditions of application of SAP and HA as eco-friendly inputs and the results’ consistency with other studies indicate the benefits of these inputs in arid regions for enhancing the performance of sesame crop.
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Abbreviations
- CC:
-
canopy cover
- CCx:
-
maximum canopy cover
- ET:
-
evapotranspiration
- ETo:
-
reference evapotranspiration
- GDD:
-
growing degree day
- HI:
-
harvest index
- LAI:
-
leaf area index
- WP*:
-
normalized water productivity of the crop
- B:
-
biomass
- SY:
-
seed yield
- HI:
-
harvest index
- WUE:
-
water use efficiency
- EUW:
-
effective use of water
- SMC:
-
soil moisture content
- ƟPWP :
-
soil moisture content at the permanent wilting point
- ƟFC :
-
soil moisture content at the field capacity
- Ksat :
-
soil saturated hydraulic conductivity
- Ksexp :
-
water stress coefficient of canopy expansion
- Kssto :
-
water stress coefficient of stomata closure
- Kssen :
-
soil water stress coefficient of senescence
- NRMSE:
-
normalized root mean square error
- R2 :
-
coefficient of determination
- d:
-
the index of agreement of Willmott
- NSE:
-
the Nash–Sutcliffe model efficiency index
- CRM:
-
coefficient of residual mass
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Acknowledgments
Authors express their gratitude to Prof. M. Banayan, Dr. M.H. Fallah, and Dr. E. Farrokhi whose comments and suggestions were extremely valuable and helped improve this study.
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Partial financial support of the Center of Excellence for Special Crops (CESC) facilities for conducting this experiment is acknowledged.
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The authors of this research paper have directly participated in the planning, execution, or analysis of this study. The authors read and approved the final edition of the manuscript. CRediT author statement: Mahdi Nassiri-Mahallati: project administration, conceptualization, methodology, investigation, software, writing—reviewing and editing. Mohsen Jahan: investigation, data curation, software, formal analysis, validation, writing—original draft preparation.
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Nassiri-Mahallati, M., Jahan, M. Using the AquaCrop model to simulate sesame performance in response to superabsorbent polymer and humic acid application under limited irrigation conditions. Int J Biometeorol 64, 2105–2117 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-020-02001-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-020-02001-z