Introduction

Rapeseed (Brassica napus L.) is one of the most widespread oleaginous crops in many areas worldwide and its production is expected to increase in the coming years due to recent international regulations on renewable energies. However, available rapeseed models strictly derive from the adaptation of generic crop simulators; this make them unsuitable for correctly reproducing some of the peculiarities of this crop (e.g., the relevant amount of radiation intercepted by the inflorescence during the reproductive phase). The aim of this model is the extension of WOFOST-GT2 (Stella et al., 2014) – originally developed for cereals – to rapeseed. The extension to rapeseed was achieved by (i) defining rapeseed-specific functions describing the dependence of traits from development stage and air temperature, (ii) developing a new representation for canopy architecture specific for the peculiar behavior of this crop, and (iii) including algorithms for the simulation of oil content and quality.

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