Assessment of the AquaCrop Model for Use in Simulation of Irrigated Winter Wheat Canopy Cover, Biomass, and Grain Yield in the North China Plain

Abstract

Improving winter wheat water use efficiency in the North China Plain (NCP), China is essential in light of current irrigation water shortages. In this study, the AquaCrop model was used to calibrate, and validate winter wheat crop performance under various planting dates and irrigation application rates. All experiments were conducted at the Xiaotangshan experimental site in Beijing, China, during seasons of 2008/2009, 2009/2010, 2010/2011 and 2011/2012. This model was first calibrated using data from 2008/2009 and 2009/2010, and subsequently validated using data from 2010/2011 and 2011/2012. The results showed that the simulated canopy cover (CC), biomass yield (BY) and grain yield (GY) were consistent with the measured CC, BY and GY, with corresponding coefficients of determination (R2) of 0.93, 0.91 and 0.93, respectively. In addition, relationships between BY, GY and transpiration (T), (R2 = 0.57 and 0.71, respectively) was observed. These results suggest that frequent irrigation with a small amount of water significantly improved BY and GY. Collectively, these results indicate that the AquaCrop model can be used in the evaluation of various winter wheat irrigation strategies. The AquaCrop model predicted winter wheat CC, BY and GY with acceptable accuracy. Therefore, we concluded that AquaCrop is a useful decision-making tool for use in efforts to optimize wheat winter planting dates, and irrigation strategies.

Assessment of FAO AquaCrop Model for Simulating Maize Growth and Productivity under Deficit Irrigation in a Tropical Environment

“…For the other water deficit treatments of 67% FIT and 50% FIT, there was an initial underestimation of biomass up to about 60 DAP before overestimation. Observations made regarding a general whole-season underestimation of biomass for the more severely stressed treatment (33% FIT) was analogous to that reported by Katerji et al [13] for maize and by Jin et al [29] for winter wheat.…”

“…Secondly, during this cropping season the higher growing degree days would have promoted canopy growth and biomass accumulation, specifically during early developmental stages. According to Farahani et al [3] and Jin et al [29], the development of CC affects the rate of transpiration and consequently biomass and grain accumulation. Further studies manipulating the planting dates during the two distinct cropping seasons would be valuable.…”

Estimating Wheat Yield in China at the Field and District Scale from the Assimilation of Satellite Data into the Aquacrop and Simple Algorithm for Yield (SAFY) Models

“…Especially for the latter, a preliminary calibration is an important step. The calibration of parameters for both models was done starting from reference values for winter wheat taken from the literature: [36] for SAFY and [50] for Aquacrop. The data on soil properties were obtained from samples gathered in the study site, at the same points where the crop data were collected, which were analyzed in the lab by NERCITA Beijing, for soil texture and organic matter.…”

Benchmark levels for the consumptive water footprint of crop production for different environmental conditions: a case study for winter wheat in China

“…The model performance on simulating crop growth and water use has been well tested for a variety of crop types under diverse environmental conditions (e.g. Kumar et al, 2014;Jin et al, 2014;Abedinpour et al, 2012;Mkhabela and Bullock, 2012;Andarzian et al, 2011;Stricevic et al, 2011;Heng et al, 2009;Farahani et al, 2009;García-vila et al, 2009). AquaCrop has been applied in WF accounting at field (Chukalla et al, 2015), river basin (Zhuo et al, 2016a), and national level (Zhuo et al, 2016b) at high spatial resolution.…”