ISHS Acta Horticulturae 499: V International Symposium on Computer Modelling in Fruit Research and Orchard Management
PEACH: PEACH CROP YIELD AND TREE GROWTH SIMULATION MODEL FOR RESEARCH AND EDUCATION |
| Author: | T.M. DeJong |
| Abstract:
The initial purpose of the model was to develop an integrated understanding of the annual carbon budget of peach fruit growth and crop production and to simulate the potential effects of environmental factors (temperature, light, etc.), physiological processes (leaf photosynthetic rate, respiration rate, organ developmental rates) and management practices (pruning system, fruit thinning, etc.) on peach fruit size and yield. As an environmental physiologist with the responsibility of trying to develop techniques for improving the production and management efficiency of growing fruit crops, I needed to develop an integrated, quantitative understanding of fruit crop production. Crop simulation modelling appeared to be one approach to developing that understanding. There have been very few previous attempts to develop quantitative, physiologically-based simulation models of tree fruit production because most of the early crop models depended on empirically-derived, sequential harvest data of whole plants and this approach was not feasible for large, long-lived tree crops. In 1985 the project was begun by simply trying to quantify the seasonal carbon costs for growth and respiration for fruit of early and late maturing peach cultivars (DeJong et al., 1987). This lead to the development of a relative growth rate model for describing the developmental growth potential of individual growth of peach fruit (DeJong and Goudriaan, 1989) and eventually to an integrated simulation model for the whole tree using a carbon supply and demand approach for accumulating and partitioning carbon on a daily basis throughout the growing season (Grossman and DeJong, 1994; DeJong and Grossman, 1994). The approach we used for simulating carbon partitioning was developed independently but is similar to the approach used by Marcelis (1994) for cucumbers. | |
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