An equation for modelling the temperature response of plants using only the cardinal temperatures

Abstract

Temperature is one of the most important factors that determine plant growth, development, and yield. Accurate summarization of plant temperature response is thus a prerequisite to successful crop systems modelling and application of such models to management. This paper reports on a general equation that can be used to simulate the temperature response of plants. It has the smallest number of parameters possible to simulate the plant response to the full range of temperatures relevant to plant growth and development. The equation was shown to successfully simulate the growth and development of maize, bean, wheat, barley, sorghum, and lambsquarters. The adjusted R-square of fit ranged from 0.747 to 0.998, mostly greater than 0.9. For one maize dataset that contains independent data, the equation was shown to be highly predictive. The equation could find application in crop germplasm classification, crop modelling and environmental control of artificial crop production systems.