Abstract
Determine the level of significance of planting strategy and plant architecture and how they affect plant physiology and dry matter accumulation within greenhouses is essential to actual greenhouse plant management and breeding. We thus analyzed four planting strategies (plant spacing, furrow distance, row orientation, planting pattern) and eight different plant architectural traits (internode length, leaf azimuth angle, leaf elevation angle, leaf length, leaflet curve, leaflet elevation, leaflet number/area ratio, leaflet length/width ratio) with the same plant leaf area using a formerly developed functional–structural model for a Chinese Liaoshen-solar greenhouse and tomato plant, which used to simulate the plant physiology of light interception, temperature, stomatal conductance, photosynthesis, and dry matter. Our study led to the conclusion that the planting strategies have a more significant impact overall on plant radiation, temperature, photosynthesis, and dry matter compared to plant architecture changes. According to our findings, increasing the plant spacing will have the most significant impact to increase light interception. E–W orientation has better total light interception but yet weaker light uniformity. Changes in planting patterns have limited influence on the overall canopy physiology. Increasing the plant leaflet area by leaflet N/A ratio from what we could observe for a rose the total dry matter by 6.6%, which is significantly better than all the other plant architecture traits. An ideal tomato plant architecture which combined all the above optimal architectural traits was also designed to provide guidance on phenotypic traits selection of breeding process. The combined analysis approach described herein established the causal relationship between investigated traits, which could directly apply to provide management and breeding insights on other plant species with different solar greenhouse structures.
Highlights
Chinese solar greenhouses enable growers to control the surrounding environment and make them more suitable for plant growth (Zhang S. et al, 2020), and this is widely used in agricultural industries in China (Tong et al, 2013)
The objective of this study was to estimate the effects of different combinations of influencing factors between tomato plant architecture and planting strategy on the leaflet level radiation interception, temperature profiles, and carbon assimilation for the widely used Chinese Liaoshen-solar greenhouse type (LSG) in China, and finding an optimal combination of plant architecture and planting strategy, which is suitable for LSG planting
Plant Spacing The intercepted radiation (Figures 6A,B), temperature (Figures 6C,D), and photosynthesis (Figures 6E,F) of all the eight planting patterns with plant spacing ranging from 0.3 to 0.6 m were simulated to investigate the effect of plant spacing on the canopy microclimate
Summary
Chinese solar greenhouses enable growers to control the surrounding environment and make them more suitable for plant growth (Zhang S. et al, 2020), and this is widely used in agricultural industries in China (Tong et al, 2013). Greenhouse management is usually based on the empirical knowledge and experience of the farmers (Choab et al, 2019), resulting in a large variety of greenhouse management techniques and skills This way only allows adaptations in small steps in different directions without considering an overall optimization goal. The greenhouse structure, planting strategy, and plant architecture are interdependent to each other, and knowing dynamic dependencies between these traits can make sense, for example, to profile photosynthesis performance or to instruct the greenhouse management. Those must be considered within realistic simulations, aiming to optimize plant growth conditions and, increasing yield (Chelle, 2005)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
