Analysis of growth and resource allocation |
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| Authors: | R HUNT |
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| Institution: | Unit of Comparative Plant Ecology, Department of Plant Sciences, The University, Sheffields S10 2TN, U.K. |
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| Abstract: | At UCPE we are exploring high-level, ecologically based models of growth and resource allocation in herbaceous plants, including weed species. In them, allocation is driven by variables from Plant Strategy Theory, such as below-and above-ground‘environmental stress'. A‘hyperbolic’model is described in which the allocation of resources into above-and below-ground plant parts is jointly controlled by (i) the absolute amounts of below-and above-ground stress that the plant‘perceives'; (ii) the ratio of below-ground to above-ground stress; and (iii) by the maximum growth potential of the plant itself. The inputs to the model are the fraction of its maximum potential that the plant attains and its root-shoot allometric growth coefficient. The outputs from the model are indices of the above-and below-ground stresses‘perceived’by the plant. The latter arc otherwise particularly difficult to estimate when growth and allocation are being controlled simultaneously by several suboptimal environmental variables, as happens in many crop weed systems. |
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