NON-LINEAR MODELS FOR GROWTH CURVES OF TRITICALE PLANTS UNDER IRRIGATION CONDITIONS

The present work aimed to model the growth curves of some triticale cultivars with respect to their dry weight-age relationships and to determine a suitable non-linear model explaining their growth curve. For this purpose five different non-linear models were used to define growth curves of triticale plants, namely Gompertz, Logistic, Morgan-Mercer-Flodin, Weibull and Richards. The coefficients of determination for Richards's model were 0.996 (for Tatlicak 97), 0.994 (for Melez 2001) and 0.997 (for Mikham 2001). Considering model selection criteria, Richards and Weibull models explained triticale growth better than Gompertz, Logistic, and Morgan-Mercer-Flodin. Richards and Weibull models seemed to be suitable models explaining triticale growth.