At regular intervals, I measured the total number of fully extended leaves, the length and width of the last fully extended leaf and the sheath length. In addition, I know the total number of plants per unit area. Could you help me with a pragmatic equation to use for calculating leaf area index at regular intervals? Any recent study in east-africa or any tropics on this issue?
I may have forgotten to mention that I work on maize but being from CIMMYT, there are only two guess....
You can use the equation given by Montgomery (1911) to calculate leaf area of maize from leaf length and width measurements:
LA = L* W * A
where LA, L, W, and A are leaf area, leaf length, leaf maximum width and a constant , respectively. The value of the constant (A) is 0.75. Once you calculate the total leaf area of all plants in a given area, you can calculate the LAI as the ratio of total leaf area to the total land area available to the plants. For tropical maize you can refer to Elings (2000). You can also refer to the following sources for more information.
Mokhtarpour, Teh,H.C.B.S., Saleh, G., Selamat, A.B, Asadi, M.E., Kamkar, B., 2010. Non-destructive estimation of maize leaf area, fresh weight, and dry weight using leaf length and leaf width. Communications in Biometry and Crop Science 5 (1): 19–26.
Dwyer, L.M., Stewart, D.W. (1986). Leaf area development in field-grown maize. Agronomy Journal 78, 334–343.
Elings, A. (2000). Estimation of leaf area in tropical maize. Agronomy Journal 92, 436–444.
McKee, G.W. (1964). A coefficient for computing leaf area in hybrid corn. Agronomy Journal 56, 240–241.
Montgomery E. G. 1911. Correlation studies in corn. Nebraska Agr. Exp. Sta. Annu. Rep. 24:108-159.
Pearce, R.B., Mock, J.H., Bailey, T.B. (1975). Rapid method for estimating leaf area per plant in maize. Crop Science 15, 691–694.
Thanks dear Tesfaye. This information is very helpful. However, I got in some seasons a LAI more than 8. Do you think this is possible? What is the expected maximum range of LAI in maize? The density was 4 plants/m2. Thanks!
First of all calculate the leaf area, ie lenght x width, then divide by the land surface area
Why do you want to calculate LAI when you can measure at
regular time intervals during growing season?
From explanation of Kindie Tesfaye (Jan 5, 2016), "A" in the formula stands for the constant, 0.75.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Geoscience
- Atmospheric Sciences
- Climate Science
- Climate Change