The Development of the Eu-Rotate N Model and Its Use to Test Strategies for Nitrogen Use Across Europe

The performance of the EU-Rotate_N model in predicting the growth and nitrogen uptake of rotations of field vegetable crops in a Mediterranean environment

“…The dynamic, process-based simulation model EU-Rotate_N was developed as a tool to optimize N use in horticultural crop rotations across Europe (Rahn et al 2010). In part, it was based on the single season N_ABLE model (Greenwood et al 1996).…”

“…The EU-Rotate_N simulation model (Rahn et al 2010) was developed to predict N dynamics for vegetable crops across Europe. However, to date this dynamic, process-based model has only been tested against a number of vegetable rotations in Germany and Norway (Rahn et al 2010) and greenhouse crop rotations in China (Guo et al 2010), but not in warm and dry field environments. To address this issue, the EU-Rotate_N model was used to estimate the growth and N uptake of crops using data taken from an experiment growing a range of field vegetables in rotation in Italy.…”

An easily implemented agro-hydrological procedure with dynamic root simulation for water transfer in the crop–soil system: Validation and application

“…The soil water properties below 100 cm for both cases were taken as the same as those in the layers immediately above. These parameter values were set in line with the study of Rahn et al (2007). The parameter values used for estimating potential soil evaporation and crop transpiration were according to the FAO dual crop coefficient approach proposed by Allen et al (1998).…”

“…Since models of this type are simple and the algorithms are easy to implement without numerical difficulties, many agro-hydrological models have employed this approach for soil water simulation (Arnold et al, 1993;Ritchie, 1998;Greenwood, 2001;Droogers et al, 2001;Brisson et al, 2003;Rahn et al, 2007;Renaud et al, 2008). Such models include the prominent CropWat model developed by the FAO which was widely used for irrigation scheduling (http://www.fao.org/nr/water/infores_databases_cropwat.html).…”

“…The hydrological model was developed by extending the work of Lee and Abriola (1999) to take consideration of evaporation and root water uptake. Thus the hydrology simulation in agro-hydrological models such as the recently developed model for the combined nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium fertilizers , and a major EC financed model for nitrogen fertilizer and irrigation (Rahn et al, 2007), could be updated. Also the study demonstrated how the developed model could be used to study the effects of changes in external environment on water dynamics in the crop-soil system.…”