Dynamic crop growth modelling to quantify the yield gap due to unfavorable soil hydrological conditions.

Since the 80’s different systems have been developed in the Netherlands to quantify the yield gap due to too dry and too wet conditions. These systems simulate the soil hydrological conditions in detail but crop growth is simulated with a simple procedure using a prescribed crop development (static). In order to specify the yield gap by different stressors the main driver is the amount of transpiration reduction occurred by each stressor. With the release of Watervision Agriculture the simple crop module is replaced by a more dynamic crop module (SWAP-WOFOST). Stress which occurs will influence the crop development and thereby different stressors interact with each other. This raises the question if the method to specify the yield gap used in the static crop module can still be applied. By linking the dynamic crop module with the soil module the crop development and the soil hydrological conditions are simulated in detail. The interaction between both modules, the rootzone, is still simulated in a rather straight forward way. Is it possible to use information of both modules to simulate a adaptive rootzone? And how big is the influence of an adaptive rootzone in quantifying the yield gap?