An Equation for Modelling the Temperature Response of Plants using only the Cardinal Temperatures

Temperature is one of the most important factors that determine plant growth, development, and yield. Accurate summarization of plant temperature response is thus a prerequisite to successful crop systems modelling and application of such models to management. This paper reports on a general equation that can be used to simulate the temperature response of plants. The equation reads asr l R max 0 T max kT T max kT opt 10 T T opt 1