About

SUCROS1&2 is a mechanistic crop growth model as influenced by environmental conditions. SUCROS2 simulates both potential and water limited growth of a crop, i.e. its dry matter accumulation under resp. ample and rainfed supply of water and nutrients in a pest-, disease- and weed-free environment under the prevailing weather conditions. The rate of dry matter accumulation is a function of irradiation, temperature, crop characteristics and water supply. The basis for the calculation is the rate of CO2 assimilation (photosynthesis) of the canopy; it is a function of incoming radiation and light. After substraction of maintenance respiration, growth of leaf, stem, root and storage organs are simulated. Biomass partitioning depends on crop development stage, which is computed as a function of temperature only. With crop specific input parameters different crops can be simulated.

A brief history of SUCROS

By Pepijn van Oort, January 2018.

SUCROS (Goudriaan and van Laar, 1994; van Laar et al., 1997) was developed as one of the models in the Wageningen school of crop growth models (see Bouman et al. 1996 and van Ittersum et al. 2003 for the origins of SUCROS). Compared with the equally famous LINTUL, SUCROS uses a more sophisticated leaf photosynthesis model. LINTUL uses radiation use efficiency (RUE). SUCROS uses a light response curve (LRC) and it integrates photosynthesis over the day, it integrates photosynthesis  over different canopy depths and it distinguishes between direct and diffuse radiation. The recent biochemically more sophisticated Farquhar-von Caemmerer-Berry biochemical model of leaf photosynthesis was never implemented in SUCROS.

The following newer models are “offspring” of the SUCROS model:

• ORYZA2000 (for rice)
• WOFOST (multiple crops)
• SUCROS-Cassava (van Gijzen et al., 1990)
• SUCROS-Chrysanthemum (Lin et al., 2011)
• SUCROS-Cotton (Zhang et al., 2008)
• SUCROS-Cocoa, also known as "CAcao Simulation Engine (CASE)2" (Zuidema et al., 2003; Zuidema et al., 2005)
• SUCROS-Sugarbeet (Bouman 1992; Smit and Struik 1995; Guérif and Duke, 1998; Deihimfard and Nassiri Mahallati, 2015)
• SUCROS-Wheat (van Laar et al., 1997; Simane et al., 1994;  Bindraban 1999; Yunqian Gu et al. 2017)
• JULES-SUCROS (van den Hoof et al. 2011)

Check www.library.wur.nl and search "SUCROS" for more SUCROS offspring.