abstract
- Background and Aims When examining the growth patterns of rice crops for a 5-year period, it was found that the time course of accumulation of above-ground dry matter did not follow a simple sigmoid curve as expected for a monocarpic plant. Instead, there was a decrease in growth around flowering, followed by an increase and then a final decrease of growth at crop maturity. There are two nearly equal phases of growth in rice, with about half of the first phase of vegetative growth preceding reproductive growth.
- Conclusions Analysing rice growth as two components, each with a logistic curve, provides insight into the growth processes of the plant and the pattern of yield formation. (C) 2004 Annals of Botany Company.
- Key Results Variations in the panicle phase of growth were shown to be largely a consequence of year-to-year variations in the weather, whereas the vegetative phase seemed largely independent of those variations.
- Methods Logistic curves were fitted separately to the vegetative parts of the crop and to the reproductive parts (the panicle). When the curves were summed, the combined curve gave a good description of the time course of above-ground dry matter, capturing the pause in growth and its resumption. The overall pattern of growth can be seen to be he result of this bi-phasic nature of the crop.