Abstract
This work aims to extend an existing simulation model of water-constrained growth of potato, better to simulate the incidence of constraints in the water supply and to couple that development with a simulation of the requirement for and supply of nitrogen to the growing crop.
In the model, the appearance of roots and their extension growth are calculated using experimentally determined functions of temperature. A distributed root system is simulated by following the growth of all roots individually from their nodes of origin and by arbitrarily stopping growth in a proportion of them, linearly with depth. Water extraction is calculated from the rooted horizons within the soil profile, all of which are potentially allowed to contribute water equally. Water is abstracted in an exponential pattern from a cylinder of influence around each root and the difference between horizons in the calculated water abstraction is set only by the root length density and water content in each.
The method to incorporate this weather-driven model of potato growth with another that quantifies N supply and then to simulate the joint effects of limited water and nitrogen on growth has been described but has still to be implemented. Nitrogen is assumed to be taken up passively in the transpiration stream. An average fresh weight concentration of nitrogen over all the tissues is calculated and this value is used to assess whether the supply of N is sufficient for unrestricted growth. The principal merits of the method proposed are that growth and nitrogen uptake are not directly linked by a regression-type of relation determined a priori in other experiments and that the abstraction of water and nitrogen are not uniquely coupled as the sources of each in the soil are allowed to differ. It is likely that a successful model will include data from crop monitoring as an input, leading to corrective advice, if necessary.
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MacKerron, D.K.L., Lewis, G.J. (1995). Modelling to optimize the use of both water and nitrogen by the potato crop. In: Haverkort, A.J., MacKerron, D.K.L. (eds) Potato Ecology And modelling of crops under conditions limiting growth. Current Issues in Production Ecology, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-0051-9_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-0051-9_9
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