A Physiological Approach to the Analysis of Crop Growth Data. I. Theoretical Considerations

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Abstract
Deficiencies in the traditional approach to the analysis of crop growth data are discussed, and an alternative physiological approach proposed The physiological analysis describes growth in terms of physiologically defined parameters, and allows changes in the environment of the crop during growth to be incorporated in the analysis Sets of difference equations describing daily increments (or decrements) in the dry weights of the main crop components (leaves, stems, etc ) during both vegetative and reproductive growth phases are proposed Numerical integration of these equations, combined with a suitable fitting procedure, enables values of the physiologically defined parameters providing the best description of a particular experimental data set to be obtained An analytical solution to the difference equations is also obtained by simple approximation. The results of fitting both the difference equations and the analytical solution to them to a set of sequential harvest data for a crop of the legume Stylosanthes humilis are discussed These results are used to illustrate the properties of the analyses