Abstract
Wheat leaf number is linked to plant development and biomass, making it important to accurately simulate in crop models. Leaf appearance is driven by temperature, photoperiod, and time. This study compared the original DSSAT CROPSIM-CERES temperature based linear leaf-number submodule with four submodule variations that incorporated more biologically representative nonlinear functions for temperature, photoperiod, and time. The observed data came from soil-plant-atmosphere research (SPAR) and multi-year/treatment Free-Air CO2 enrichment (FACE) experiments which covered spring and winter wheat varieties and a broad range of thermal environments and CO2 levels. The nonlinear functions improved leaf-number simulation accuracy as compared to the original version. However, leaf area index (LAI) accuracy declined, suggesting further research is needed on the relationship between these responses. Model accuracy was not impacted by CO2 levels but varied with seasonal growing degree-days, suggesting further evaluation of leaf-appearance methods across a wider temperature range is needed.
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