Abstract
A three-year long experiment was conducted on open-field tomato with different levels of water shortage stress. Three different water supply levels were set in 2017 and four levels for 2018 and 2019. Biomass and yield data were collected, along with leaf-temperature-based stress measurements on plants. These were used for calibration and validation of the AquaCrop model. The validation gave various results of biomass and yield simulation during the growing season. The largest errors in the prediction occurred in the middle of the growing seasons, but the simulation became more accurate at harvest in general. The prediction of final biomass and yields were good according to the model evaluation indicators. The relative root mean square error (nRMSE) was 12.1 and 13.6% for biomass and yield prediction, respectively. The modeling efficiency (EF) was 0.96 (biomass) and 0.99 (yield), and Willmott’s index of agreement (d) was 0.99 for both predicted parameters at harvest. The lowest nRMSE (4.17) was found in the simulation of final yields of 2018 (the calibration year). The best accuracy of the validation year was reached under mild stress treatment. No high correlation was found between the simulated and measured stress indicators. However, increasing and decreasing trends could be followed especially in the severely stressed treatments.
Highlights
Drought periods and heat waves affect agricultural lands year by year through Europe, especially the Mediterranean, and even the Central European region under a continental climate
Higher biomass was measured in July in all the water-stressed treatments than the final biomass at harvest, which was not as expected (Figure 1B,C)
This fact implies that the sampled plants were above average by these two sampling dates
Summary
Drought periods and heat waves affect agricultural lands year by year through Europe, especially the Mediterranean, and even the Central European region under a continental climate. Mitigating or avoiding the negative effects on crops can be provided by irrigation, mostly. Due to technological and technical novelties, the development of irrigation systems has been continuous during the past several decades [3]. Major improvements had been implemented especially on micro- and sprinkler irrigation systems. These help farmers to save irrigation water and avoid irrigation-related environmental problems but only if farmers have the knowledge to exploit the opportunities of technology. This knowledge should be provided via scientific research
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