Estimation of Greenhouse Tomato Transpiration through Mathematical and Deep Neural Network Models Learned from Lysimeter Data

Abstract

Since transpiration plays a key role in optimal irrigation management, knowledge of the irrigation demand of crops like tomatoes, which are highly susceptible to water stress, is necessary. One way to determine irrigation demand is to measure transpiration, which is affected by environmental factor or growth stage. This study aimed to estimate the transpiration amount of tomatoes and find a suitable model using mathematical and deep learning models using minute-by-minute data. Pearson correlation revealed that observed environmental variables significantly correlate with crop transpiration. Inside air temperature and outside radiation positively correlated with transpiration, while humidity showed a negative correlation. Multiple Linear Regression (MLR), Polynomial Regression model, Artificial Neural Network (ANN), Long short-term Memory (LSTM), and Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU) models were built and compared their accuracies. All models showed potential in estimating transpiration with R 2 values ranging from 0.770 to 0.948 and RMSE of 0.495 mm/min to 1.038 mm/min in the test dataset. Deep learning models outperformed the mathematical models; the GRU demonstrated the best performance in the test data with 0.948 R 2 and 0.495 mm/min RMSE. The LSTM and ANN closely followed with R 2 values of 0.946 and 0.944, respectively, and RMSE of 0.504 m/min and 0.511, respectively. The GRU model exhibited superior performance in short-term forecasts while LSTM for long-term but requires verification using a large dataset. Compared to the FAO56 Penman-Monteith (PM) equation, PM has a lower RMSE of 0.598 mm/min than MLR and Polynomial models degrees 2 and 3 but performed least among all models in capturing variability in transpiration. Therefore, this study recommended GRU and LSTM models for short-term estimation of tomato transpiration in greenhouses.