Crop-Weather Analysis Model: Review and Model Development

Abstract

This paper presents a brief review of selected literature pertaining to crop-weather analysis and the development of a new climatological technique which evaluates the simple and interacting daily contributions of up to three agrometecrological variables to the production of a yield as a function of biameteoro-logical time. The input to the proposed crop-weather analysis model consists of climatological data including maximum and minimum air temperatures and derived agrometeorological variables, such as actual or potential evapotranspiration (AE or PE) computed from the standard climatic data. The model output gives the accumulated daily yield contributions and the mathematical relationships between each input variable and yield at any selected crop development stage. From several computer runs, the variable combination of minimum temperature, maximum temperature and AE/PE was found to give the closest estimates (CD=0.77) of wheat yields as obtained from experiments conducted from 1953–62 at eight Canada Department of Agriculture research establishments located across the country. Although the crop-weather analysis model as here proposed requires further testing, verification, and possibly modifications for special applications, these adaptations can easily be accomplished through changes of the input controls of the extremely versatile computer program system.