Abstract
During the post-rainy (rabi) season in India around 3 million tonnes of sorghum grain is produced from 5.7 million ha of cropping. This underpins the livelihood of about 5 million households. Severe drought is common as the crop grown in these areas relies largely on soil moisture stored during the preceding rainy season. Improvement of rabi sorghum cultivars through breeding has been slow but could be accelerated if drought scenarios in the production regions were better understood. The sorghum crop model within the APSIM (Agricultural Production Systems sIMulator) platform was used to simulate crop growth and yield and the pattern of crop water status through each season using available historical weather data. The current model reproduced credibly the observed yield variation across the production region (R2 = 0.73). The simulated trajectories of drought stress through each crop season were clustered into five different drought stress patterns. A majority of trajectories indicated terminal drought (43%) with various timings of onset during the crop cycle. The most severe droughts (25% of seasons) were when stress began before flowering and resulted in failure of grain production in most cases, although biomass production was not affected so severely. The frequencies of drought stress types were analyzed for selected locations throughout the rabi tract and showed different zones had different predominating stress patterns. This knowledge can help better focus the search for adaptive traits and management practices to specific stress situations and thus accelerate improvement of rabi sorghum via targeted specific adaptation. The case study presented here is applicable to other sorghum growing environments.
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Claims 7
Claim · model-written summary
The APSIM sorghum model reproduced observed yield variation across the production region with R2 = 0.73.
SorghumNot reportedDirection
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“The current model reproduced credibly the observed yield variation across the production region (R2 = 0.73).”
e1“The sorghum crop model within the APSIM”
Claim · model-written summary
Simulated seasonal drought trajectories clustered into five patterns.
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“The simulated trajectories of drought stress through each crop season were clustered into five different drought stress patterns.”
t0“sorghum”
Claim · model-written summary
Terminal drought occurred in 43% of simulated trajectories.
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“A majority of trajectories indicated terminal drought (43%) with various timings of onset during the crop cycle.”
t0“sorghum”
Claim · model-written summary
The most severe droughts began before flowering in 25% of seasons.
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“The most severe droughts (25% of seasons) were when stress began before flowering”
t0“sorghum”
Claim · model-written summary
Early severe drought caused grain production failure in most cases.
- Treatment
- stress began before floweringe0
- Outcome
- grain productione0
- Direction
- failuree0
- Qualifier
- in most casese0
Not reportedComparator
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“stress began before flowering and resulted in failure of grain production in most cases”
t0“sorghum”
Claim · model-written summary
Early severe drought affected biomass production less severely than grain production.
- Treatment
- stress began before floweringe1
- Outcome
- biomass productione0
- Direction
- not affected so severelye0
- Comparator
- grain productione0
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“failure of grain production in most cases, although biomass production was not affected so severely”
e1“stress began before flowering”
t0“sorghum”
Claim · model-written summary
Different rabi zones had different predominant drought-stress patterns.
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“different zones had different predominating stress patterns”
t0“sorghum”
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