Modeling Basil Response to Water Stress under Different Soil Water Levels

Root water uptake when under water stress conditions can be quantitatively explained through appropriate mathematical functions. These functions can act as very useful tools in irrigation scheduling and field water management if they could adequately predict the plant response to water stresses. The objective followed in this study was to evaluate some root water uptake reduction functions when the plants under water stress conditions. Towards this end an extensive experiment was conducted with four different irrigation water levels including 120%, 100%, 80% and 60% of crop water requirement each in three replicates. The plants were subjected to water stress when they were at their three leaf stages. The daily matric potential was recorded through Theta Probes and plotting of soil water retention curve. The relative transpiration was obtained by measuring daily soil water contents. A comparison of the calculated statistics of maximum error, normalized Root Mean Square Error, modeling efficiency, coefficient of residual mass, and coefficient of determination indicated that all models are overestimating the daily root water uptake. However, the nonlinear model of Homaee et al., (2002) provided more reasonable results for root water uptake than the other models.The results further indicated that linear model of Feddes et al., (1978) and either of the nonlinear models of van Genuchten (1987) and Homaee et al., (2002) bear acceptable accuracy for estimating the accumulative relative root water uptake during the growth period.