Performance of four crop model for simulations of wheat phenology, leaf growth, biomass and yield across planting dates

Robustness of four wheat simulation model were tested with 2-year field experiments of three cultivars across a wide range of sowing dates in two different climatic regions: Faisalabad (semi-arid) and Layyah (arid), in Punjab-Pakistan. Wheat growing season temperature ranged from -0.1°C to 43°C. The wide series of sowing dates was a unique opportunity to grow the wheat in an environment which temperatures varies from -0.1°C to 43°C. The CERES-Wheat, Nwheat, CROPSIM-Wheat and APSIM-Wheat model were calibrated against the least-stressed treatment for each wheat cultivar. Overall, the four models described performance of early, optimum and late sown wheat well, but poorly described yields of very late planting dates with associated high temperatures during grain filling. The poor accuracy of simulations of yield for extreme planting dates point to the need to improve the accuracy of model simulations at the high end of the growing temperature range, especially given the expected future increases in growing season temperature. Improvement in simulation of maximum leaf area index of wheat for all models is needed. APSIM-Wheat only poorly simulated days to maturity of very and extremely late sown wheat compared to other models. Overall, there is a need of improvement in function of models to response high temperature.