Introduction
The pigeonpea module was developed by Michael Robertson and Peter Carberry at APSRU, and YS Chauhan, R Ranganathan, and G O'Leary of ICRISAT. APSIM-Pigeonpea belongs to the LEGUME family of crop modules in APSIM. The reader is referred to the science document for the legume module for a comprehensive description of the processes simulated by APSIM-Pigeonpea and to Robertson et al. (2001) for parameter derivation and model testing. This document outlines some pigeonpea-specific issues that are not covered by the legume science document.
Notable features of APSIM-PIGEONPEA
- The phenology of pigeonpea cultivars are responsive to temperature and photoperiod, but not vernalisation.
- APSIM-Pigeonpea is not phosphorus-responsive, this is currently under development.
- Crop growth is not sensitive to waterlogging.
Cultivars and crop classes¶
There is one crop class.
There are three generic cultivars able to be simulated: extra short duration, short duration and medium duration. A long duration type was not able to be parameterised due to lack of data, however the module owner would be able to give advice on a long duration type if this were required by a user. Cultivar types differ in terms of biomass partitioning to grain and phenology.
Validation
APSIM-Pigeonpea has received testing in Central India , with factors such as cultivars, sowing date, irrigation, soil type, plant population density, row spacing varying. Validation of APSIM-Pigeonpea is described by Robertson et al. (2001). The accompanying figure demonstrates the performance of the module for grain yield and biomass.
Figure 1: Performance of the pigeonpea module (observed versus simulated grain yield and final biomass in kg/ha) against test datasets reported by Robertson et al. (2001).
References
Robertson MJ, Silim SN, Chauhan YS, Ranganathan R 2000a Predicting growth and development of pigeonpea: biomass accumulation and partitioning. Field Crops Research 70, 89-100.
