SIMULATION OF GROWTH AND MORPHOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT OF MAIZE UNDER CONTRASTING WATER REGIMES

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Abstract
The use of crop growth models for resource management decisions such as weed control will require the detailed simulation of plant structures and functions in order to determine crop response to resources. A crop growth model was constructed on the computing facility at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications which was intended to simulate the effect of changing water status on plant growth processes. The model was tested against field data collected during an experiment in which the morphology of a maize crop growing under an imposed water deficit over a shallow water table was compared to that of an irrigated control treatment. The effects of this deficit on soil and canopy water status, leaf tip appearance, and on the distribution of growth with node number were compared for the simulated and recorded data. The use of simple equations describing the partitioning of growth to successive nodes enabled reasonably accurate estimates to be made of the distribution of leaf, sheath and internode mass with node number during both deficit and irrigated treatments. Consequently, realistic estimates of the vertical distribution of leaf area could be made for use in subsequent studies of inter-specific competition for irradiance interception.Key words: Simulation modelling, water stress, leaf area, canopy, maize growth