Radiation in crops

Abstract

In this chapter, the theory for interception and scattering of radiation by crop canopies will be developed. The canopy will be considered as consisting of individual leaves with a soil underneath, and total canopy absorption and reflection will be computed on the basis of these composing elements. The theory will be developed in steps: first for leaves that are supposed to be black to avoid the complication of scattered radiation, and that are all horizontal, allowing their intercepting projection to be easily calculated. These constraints will be released one at a time later. First we will permit non-horizontal orientations. In the following section, we return to a horizontal orientation, but permit non-black (scattering) leaves. The general situation will be subsequently considered with both scattering and non-horizontal leaves.