WOFOST introduction

WOFOST (Van Keulen and Wolf, 1986; Boogaard et al.,1998) belongs to the family of models derived by SUCROS (Van Keulen et al., 1982) and described by Bouman et al. (1996) and, more recently, by Van Ittersum et al. (2003).

WOFOST adopts the SUCROS approach for simulating potential production. Crop development can be simulated as a simple function of temperature, either related to photoperiod or due to both thermal and photoperiodic conditions. Gross CO2 assimilation, maintenance and growth respiration are simulated.

Fluxes of direct and diffuse photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) are derived from the diffuse radiation and the Lambert – Beer’s law is used for computing the light distribution in the canopy. Extinction coefficient for solar radiation can be customized according to the canopy architecture of the simulated variety.

Maintenance respiration is assumed to be proportional to the dry weight of the plants organs, considering that different organs have different respiration/weight ratios. Total dry matter production is partitioned among the different crop organs according to partitioning coefficients, changing according to the development stage. Leaves senescence is considered.

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