Modelling the Impacts of Water and Nitrogen Nutrition on Yield

Water and nitrogen (N) are both major critical limiting elements in agricultural systems. Numerous studies on annual and perennial species have shown that low water and or N inputs can negatively impact plant functioning and yield elaboration, with possible alteration of crop sustainability in the long term. Although many studies reported the individual effect of water or N constraints on plant functioning over the cropping season, little is known about the combined effects of water and nitrogen starvation on plant main functions and resulting plant adaptive processes at the pluriannual timestep. The challenge to address such questions relies notably on the difficulties in controlling water and N cycling and availability in field for quantifying the contribution of nutrient storage in perennial organs, such as roots, for perennial crops and to unravel the overall long-term plant response to the interactions of genotype × environment × management.

Such lack of knowledge currently hampers the optimization of water and nitrogen supplies under field conditions. Plant and soil models may be relevant tools to characterize the environmental constraints experienced by the crop and for understanding and predicting the integrative impacts of such constraints on the main plant functions in both the short and longer terms in order to adapt management decisions. Different modeling approaches may be useful for this purpose, including functional models, which are aimed at stimulating a specific plant process, to crop models, which instead integrate several main plant processes to simulate the entire crop growth cycle. However, despite the diversity of existing plant/soil models adapted to both annual and perennial crops, there is still a need to develop some integrated models to determine specific crop responses to the interactive effects of water and nitrogen constraints in the short and long term.

Therefore, articles to be published in this Special Issue (original research papers, perspectives, hypotheses, opinions, reviews, modeling approaches and methods) will focus on the modeling of plant productivity and sustainability responses to the combined effects of water and nitrogen constraints. Submissions that focus on functional aspects, such as in crop models, are also welcome.

Prof. Dr. Anne Pellegrino
Guest Editor

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• water deficit
• nitrogen deficit
• yield component
• crop sustainability
• plant nutrient balance
• nutrient storage
• functional model
• crop model
• genotype
• crop management