Crop transpiration and top-leaf temperature

Growers try to achieve favourable growing conditions with their cultivation practices and climate control. Especially in warm and cold periods of the year this requires steering skills and in horticultural skills. Training and education provide handles and insights for this. One of the recently developed tools to support this is Kassim, an application with a dedicated interface to show simulation results of the extensive dynamic greenhouse climate simulation model Kaspro. When launched, back in 2018, this tool gave realistic results for the winter situation, but too high crop temperatures were calculated for summer situations. This detracts from the trust and usability of this tool. Therefore, in this project the simulation model has been improved. This resulted in a proper matching computation of crop temperature and transpiration of Tomato, Cucumber, Gerbera and Anthurium when compared with measurements. The realistic calculations, based on sound physical explanatory modelling and parametrizing, allows for all kind of scenarios to be analysed. The report shows a number of examples to explain which type of insights can be obtained and how this helps growers to make better informed decisions about climate control. The project is funded by Kas Als Energiebron, a research program supported by the Ministry of Agriculture Nature and Food Quality and LTO-Glaskracht Nederland.