• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.228-232
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• 2018

Process-based crop models have been used to assess the impact of climate change on crop production. These models are implemented in procedural or object oriented computer programming languages including FORTRAN, C++, Delphi, Java, which have a stiff learning curve. The requirement for a high level of computer programming is one of barriers for efforts to develop and improve crop models based on biophysical process. In this study, we attempted to develop a Chinese cabbage model using Microsoft Excel with Visual Basic for Application (VBA), which would be easy enough for most agricultural scientists to develop a simple model for crop growth simulation. Results from Soil-Plant-Atmosphere-Research (SPAR) experiments under six temperature conditions were used to determine parameters of the Chinese cabbage model. During a plant growing season in SPAR chambers, numbers of leaves, leaf areas, growth rate of plants were measured six times. Leaf photosynthesis was also measured using LI-6400 Potable Photosynthesis System. Farquhar, von Caemmerer, and Berry (FvCB) model was used to simulate a leaf-level photosynthesis process. A sun/shade model was used to scale up to canopy-level photosynthesis. An Excel add-in, which is a small VBA program to assist crop modeling, was used to implement a Chinese cabbage model under the environment of Excel organizing all of equations into a single set of crop model. The model was able to simulate hourly changes in photosynthesis, growth rate, and other physiological variables using meteorological input data. Estimates and measurements of dry weight obtained from six SPAR chambers were linearly related ($R^2=0.985$). This result indicated that the Excel/VBA can be widely used for many crop scientists to develop crop models.