Published in Scientific Papers. Series A. Agronomy, Vol. LXIV, Issue 1
Written by Diana DOGARU, Cătălin LAZĂR
Crop growth models are useful tools for in-depth analyses on agricultural productivity and resource (land and water) use under various environmental and management conditions, rendering solution-oriented information for end-users. The paper showcases a spatially explicit application of a crop growth model for simulating the cultivation of a commonly used maize cultivar in the Baragan Plain, South-East Romania. We have parameterized the EPIC+ model (Williams et al., 1989; Kamali et al., 2018) with geographical, agricultural practices and experimental-based crop inputs, and have designed two scenarios for crop parameter calibration and improved nutrient and irrigation application, respectively. These methodological and conceptional steps enabled model performance assessment and maize yields estimation in the study area. With adjustments of sensitive crop parameters and agricultural practices in the model setup, crop growth is particularly constrained by stress factors (e.g. nutrient stress), and potentially by model structure parameters, which also need to be calibrated. It was achieved a good agreement between areal averaged estimated yields and reported yields, suggesting that the model is suitable for further regional investigations and for supporting decisions on agricultural resources management.
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