ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Plant Sci.

Sec. Technical Advances in Plant Science

Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1544735

Simulation of strawberry yield using dry matter distribution based on the potential growth of the sink-source organs

Provisionally accepted
  • 1Institute of Vegetable and Floriculture Science, National Agriculture and Food Research Organization, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan
  • 2Kurokawa Field Science Center, Meiji University, Kawasaki, Kanagawa, Japan

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Strawberry, a vital crop in horticulture, faces challenges like pest infestations and climate variability that affect stable production. A crop model based on photosynthesis-derived dry matter (DM) production is an effective method to examine the environment-plant growth relationship. The developed model simulates total DM production and yield overtime using greenhouse environment, each inflorescence anthesis dates, leaf area, and physiological parameters as inputs. Total DM production was accurately simulated by inputting leaf area measured by either destructive measurement or web-camera based imaging without destructive measurements (RRMSE = 0.15 and 0.17). Cumulative yields closely matched measured values across two distinct growing seasons (RRMSE = 0.11-0.15). The monthly yield generally aligned with the observed values, except at the beginning and end of the harvest period, where the model tended to overestimate production. These result suggested the process of DM distribution calculation based on the potential growth of the individual leaves and fruit clusters present on that day was effective in capturing the dynamics of DM distribution to the fruit. The model could be applied to strawberry production in greenhouses controlled with optimal ranges for the plant growth. The model's applicability to diverse greenhouse conditions would be broadened by improving the physiological parameters in future work.

Keywords: Fragaria × ananassa, greenhouse, crop model, Validation, Yield prediction

Received: 13 Dec 2024; Accepted: 30 Jun 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Sugiyama, Kakei, Iwasaki, Oda and Isozaki. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Masahide Isozaki, Institute of Vegetable and Floriculture Science, National Agriculture and Food Research Organization, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.