Project Leader: Prof. Dr. Eckart Priesack, Helmholtz Zentrum München, Institute of Biochemical Plant Pathology

Funding period: 2012-2015

Predicted changes in average values of climatic factors (increased atmospheric CO₂ concentration, increased temperature, altered precipitation patterns) and predicted changes in climatic variability (frequencies, duration and degree of climatic extremes such as heat and frost periods, droughts, floods and storms) will impact on the yield and quality of agricultural crops.

Whereas effects of many of these climatic factors on primary production of agricultural crops have been investigated, little is known about the impact on the chemical composition of plant biomass. Even less is known about how to model and simulate climatic effects on the plant internal transport and transformation processes of chemicals (i.e., macro- and micro-nutrients, sugars, starch, phenolics) that determine crop quality parameters (e.g., carbon to nitrogen (C/N) ratio of grains).

Such process knowledge is necessary to predict the quality of future crop yields. The subproject, therefore, will develop and test a new crop growth model based on improved sub-models of leaf photosynthesis and resource allocation dynamics. The focus of further model development will be on the plant internal hydro-dynamics and solute transport. The new sub-models will extend the single plant growth model PLATHO and the canopy crop models CERES, SPASS, SUCROS, and GECROS that are part of the agro-ecosystem model Expert-N.