Modelling lengths of cucumber internodes

Modelling lengths of cucumber internodes

Light has tremendous effects on crop architecture and its quantity and quality affect internode lengths in cucumber (Cucumis sativus). Kahlen and Stützel make simplifications to a light quantity- and quality-sensitive model for predicting final internode length and show that for vertically trained cucumber plants, leaf area data can be substituted successfully for local light quality data. In unstressed plants, leaf area over the upper ten ranks seems to represent the feedback of growth architecture on internode elongation, and predictions using this variable can be even better than those of the original model based on the red : far-red ratio.