J Agro Crop Sci (2014) ISSN 0931-2250

DROUGHT STRESS

Predicting Crop Yields with the Agricultural Reference Index

for Drought
P. Woli1, J. W. Jones1, K. T. Ingram1 & G. Hoogenboom2
1 Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, University of Florida Gainesville, FL, USA
2 Washington State University Prosser, WA, USA

Keywords Abstract
agricultural reference index for drought;
drought index; stress sensitivity; water stress; A generic agricultural drought index, called Agricultural Reference Index for
yield model; yield prediction Drought (ARID), was designed recently to quantify water stress for use in pre-
dicting crop yield loss from drought. This study evaluated ARID in terms of its
Correspondence ability to predict crop yields. Daily historical weather data and yields of cotton,
P. Woli
maize, peanut and soybean were obtained for several locations and years in the
Department of Agricultural and Biological
south-eastern USA. Daily values of ARID were computed for each location and
Engineering
University of Florida converted to monthly average values. Using regression analyses of crop yields vs.
1741 Museum Road monthly ARID values during the crop growing season, ARID-yield relationships
Gainesville were developed for each crop. The ability of ARID to predict yield loss from
FL 32611 drought was evaluated using the root mean square error (RMSE), the Willmott
USA index and the modelling efficiency (ME). The ARID-based yield models predicted
Tel.: +1 334 844 5636
relative yields with the RMSE values of 0.144, 0.087, 0.089 and 0.142
Fax: +1 334 844 4586
(kg ha
1 yield per kg ha
1 potential yield); the Willmott index values of 0.70,
Email: premwoli@ufl.edu
0.92, 0.86 and 0.79; and the ME values of 0.33, 0.73, 0.60 and 0.49 for cotton,
Accepted February 14, 2014 maize, peanut and soybean, respectively. These values indicated that the ARID-
based yield models can predict the yield loss from drought for these crops with
doi:10.1111/jac.12055 reasonable accuracy.

not plant physiology based (Woli et al. 2012a). Because

Introduction
The shortage of water for a specified need is referred to as a
drought condition (Dracup et al. 1980). An agricultural
drought occurs when the amount of plant available water
in the root zone due to precipitation falls short of the evap-
orative demand of the atmosphere (WMO 1975, Wilhite
and Glantz 1985, Maracchi 2000). The severity of drought
may be quantified using an indicator, called a drought
index, which integrates all meteorological, hydrological and
agricultural information typically into a number and gives
a comprehensible big picture on drought conditions (Nara-
simhan and Srinivasan 2005, Hayes 2013). One of the
intended, and probably the most important, uses of an
agricultural drought index is to predict yield loss from
drought (Sakamoto 1978, Kumar and Panu 1997, Quiring
and Papakryiakou 2003). Although a number of drought
indices are available for agricultural purposes, the majority
of them are not able to estimate crop yield loss due to
drought, the ultimate interest of farmers, because they are
photosynthetic assimilation, that is, yield formation, is a
plant physiological process, only a physiology-based
drought index can predict the drought-induced yield loss
more accurately.
Considering this aspect and the other essential features of
an agricultural drought index that many current drought
indices lack simplicity, generality, soilplantatmosphere
continuum basis, and daily temporal resolution Woli et al.
(2012a) developed a new drought index recently, called the
Agricultural Reference Index for Drought (ARID). The phys-
iological basis to ARID comes from the use of transpiration
(T) as T is directly related to stomatal opening, which in
turn, affects carbon dioxide assimilation. Thus, the amount
of biomass or marketable yield produced can be determined
by the amount of water transpired during the growing sea-
son. When T falls short of the evaporative demand of the
atmosphere (potential evapotranspiration), plant water defi-
cit occurs. Based on this concept, ARID is computed as the
ratio of plant water deficit to plant water need as

2014 Blackwell Verlag GmbH, 200 (2014) 163171 163

Woli et al.
ARID 1
T=ETo 1 depends on climatic factors that are associated with evapo-
where T is transpiration (mm) and ETo is the potential
evapotranspiration (mm) of the reference grass (Allen et al.
2005) whose use has provided simplicity and generality to
the index. The index is computed daily, and its values range
from 0 to 1, with 0 (when transpiration occurs at potential
rate) indicating no water stress and 1 (when no transpira-
tion occurs) indicating a full water stress. Between these
two values, ARID decreases linearly with an increase in T.
While T is calculated using a simple root water uptake
model (Meinke et al. 1993, Dardanelli et al. 2004), ETo is
estimated using the FAO-56 PenmanMonteith method
(Allen et al. 1998).
Key features of ARID are simplicity, generality, daily res-
olution and soilplantatmosphere basis. The index is
physically and physiologically sound and computationally
simple and also can characterize an agricultural drought
better than many other drought indices that are applied to
agricultural systems (Woli et al. 2012a). Although ARID, as
a generic index, uses a fixed set of parameter values, it is
applicable to a wide range of crops, soils, topographies and
management and has fairly small uncertainties (Woli et al.
2012b). As a measure to quantify and characterize drought
conditions, ARID can also be used to forecast droughts
(Woli et al. 2013).
This study developed ARID-based drought-induced
yield loss prediction models for several field crops
grown in the south-eastern United States and evaluated
the performance of these models to estimate yield loss
from drought.
Materials and Methods
ARID-based yield model
Briggs and Shantz (1913) found a close relationship between
crop transpiration and crop dry matter production. They
quantified this relationship as the transpiration ratio:
Tr T=Ydm 2

1
where Tr is the transpiration ratio (mm kg ), T is transpi-
ration (mm), and Ydm is crop dry matter yield (kg).
Crop dry matter yield may be estimated from transpira-
tion by replacing Tr
1 in Eqn 2 by a, a proportionality con-
stant (kg mm
1) that depends on crop species and
growing conditions, as:
Ydm aT 3
Because a is the reciprocal of transpiration ratio
(mm kg
1), it can also be regarded as water use efficiency
(Viets 1962), which is the amount of dry matter produced
per unit of water transpired. The water use efficiency (a)
164
rative demand and is controlled to a large extent by atmo-
spheric relative humidity (Arkley 1963).
Cole and Mathews (1923) and Mathews and Brown
(1938) found similar linear relationship as Eqn 3 between
total evapotranspiration during the crop season and mar-
ketable yield for various crops:
Y aET 4
where Y is the marketable yield or simply yield (kg), and
ET is evapotranspiration (mm). Replacing Y by P (the
potential yield, which occurs when soil moisture does not
limit growth) and ET by ETp (potential evapotranspiration,
which occurs when soil water is not limiting), P can be esti-
mated from ETP as:
P aET p 5
Dividing Eqn 4 by Eqn 5 produces the relative yield rela-
tionship (Hanks 1974), thus eliminating crop- and loca-
tion-specific differences in the actual production of dry
matter (Doorenbos and Kassam 1979, Tsakiris 1982):
ET
R 6
ETp
where R is the relative yield of a crop (the ratio of Y to P),
and ET/ETP is the relative evapotranspiration occurred
during the crop season. Relative yield is the yield that is
produced under water-stress condition relative to the one
that could be produced under non-water-stress condition,
the other inputs remaining the same. For instance, R = 0.7
means if a crop yields 1 Mg ha
1 under irrigated condi-
tions, it would yield 0.7 Mg ha
1 under rainfed conditions.
The fraction of yield loss from drought during the crop sea-
son is then computed as (1
R). Equation 6 is valid only if
the quantities on both sides of the equality sign belong to
the same set of conditions such as of weather, soil, geno-
type and management. For instance, the relative yield of a
crop growing in a nutrient poor soil is directly propor-
tional to the relative evapotranspiration of the crop grow-
ing in the same soil, other variables other than water
remaining constant.
Because plant physiological processes are different dur-
ing different crop phenological stages, a differential yield
response to water deficiency occurs during each stage of
the growing season (Jensen 1968, Hiler and Clark 1971,
Hiler et al. 1974, Doorenbos and Kassam 1979). A yield
model that takes into account a series of stages within the
growing season can reflect the effect of water stress on yield
better than the one that considers the whole season as a sin-
gle stage (Jensen 1968, Doorenbos and Kassam 1979).
Because crop yield depends on many factors besides
drought, relative yield may be more reliably estimated than
2014 Blackwell Verlag GmbH, 200 (2014) 163171

absolute yield based on a series of stage-specific relative
evapotranspiration ratios during the season. Generally, the
effect of water deficit on crop yield at different growth
stages can be expressed using either geometric or arithmetic
principles (Tsakiris 1982). A geometric method combines
effects of deficiencies occurring during different stages in a
multiplicative form, whereas an arithmetic method com-
bines effects in an additive form. To consider that crop
yield is not linearly related to total water use when plants
are stressed (Jensen 1968), a geometric method can be used
to reflect the possible drastic reduction in crop yield if a
severe water stress occurs during a particularly sensitive
crop stage. Considering that determinate, flowering crops
have several distinct growth stages with differing drought
sensitivities and applying the geometric approach, Eqn 6
can be extended to the following equation for estimating
relative yield for a determinate crop.
M 
Y 
ET km
R 7
m1
ETP m Although yield data were available, cultivars were not con-
where the symbol indicates a product, m is a
crop stage, M is the number of stages considered in the
crop growing season, and km is the relative sensitivity of
the crop to water stress during the m-th stage of growth.
Because ARID is based on dense and actively growing
reference grass, it assumes T to be approximately equal to
evapotranspiration (ET). The potential evapotranspiration
(ETp) of the reference grass is called the reference grass
evapotranspiration (ETo). Thus, combining Eqn 1 and
Eqn 7 after replacing ET and ETp in Eqn 7 by T and ETo,
respectively, produces the following model for predicting
relative yields for a determinate crop based on the crop
stage-specific values of ARID.
Y
M tivars and management. The highest two irrigated yields
R 1
ARIDkmm 8 were averaged to approximate the potential yield for a
m1
Data
For exploring associations between ARID and crop yields,
four major crops grown in the south-eastern USA were
studied: maize (Zea mays L.), cotton (Gossypium hirsutum
L.), soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merr.) and peanut (Arachis
hypogaea L.). Locations in this region were selected based
on the availability of both rainfed and irrigated yield data
from previous studies. The rainfed and irrigated yields were
needed to compute relative yields. The yield data used in
this study were obtained from the University of Georgias
Statewide Variety Testing (SWVT) program (www.swvt.
uga.edu/index.html) and from the database of the Decision
Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer (DSSAT)
model (Jones et al. 2003, Hoogenboom et al. 2004). For
2014 Blackwell Verlag GmbH, 200 (2014) 163171
ARID Predicting Crop Yields
cotton, maize and peanut, the SWVT website was the sole
data source. The maize data were obtained for two loca-
tions in Georgia, whereas the yields of cotton and peanut
each were obtained from three locations (Table 1). In case
of soybean, none of the studies had both irrigated and rain-
fed yields for a given year in any location in the region. The
locations, however, had irrigated yields in other years (that
did not have rainfed yields). The soybean yield data for
seven locations in Georgia were obtained from SWVT. The
data for 1987 through 1996 were obtained through Mavro-
matis et al. (2001), whereas those for 1997 through 2008
were obtained from the SWVT website. The soybean data
for one more location Gainesville, Florida were
obtained from the DSSAT database (Zur et al. 1982, Wilk-
erson et al. 1983, Hoogenboom et al. 2004, Kenneth Boote
personal communication).
Study design and computations
sistent across locations and years. That is, for each crop,
there was no common cultivar grown in all locations and
years, and management was also different across locations
and years. The SWVT website, the principal data source,
consisted of a sheet of data for each crop, location and year,
each containing a range of yield records obtained from sev-
eral trials conducted for a number of cultivars available in a
year (http://www.swvt.uga.edu/2009/cn09/AP101-Coastal.
pdf). To minimize the variability and maximize consistency
in the data and to make sure that the data reflect standard
management, except water, the varieties that were within
95 % of the highest yield each year were picked to produce
the rainfed yield data used in this study. Like rainfed data,
the irrigated crops also had a range of yields for several cul-
given crop, year and location to reduce observation errors.
Along with the yields, the planting and harvesting dates
of each crop in each location and year were obtained, and,
from them, the duration of each crop growing season was
computed. In general, the growing season of each crop
across locations and years had the duration of about
5 months. To account for the differential responses of
crops to water stress in different periods of time during the
growing seasons, each crop season was divided into five
periods, each with 30 days. The first 30-day period was
counted from the day of planting. The 5 months were used
to approximate five growing stages: juvenile, vegetative
development, flowering, grain filling and ripening.
To compute ARID values, daily historical weather data
daily values of ambient minimum, maximum, and dew-
point temperatures, precipitation, solar radiation and wind
speed for the corresponding locations and years were col-
165
Woli et al.

Table 1 Various seasons of rainfed cotton, maize, peanut and soybean crops grown in several locations in the south-eastern USA

Crop (i)

Cotton Maize Peanut Soybean

Location (j) Seasons DOP1 Seasons DOP Seasons DOP Seasons DOP

Blairsville, GA 15 (8795) May 26 [3]

Calhoun, GA 17 (9808) Apr 16 [4] 24 (9000) May 20 [3]
Gainesville, FL 4 (7885) Jun 28 [14]
Griffin, GA 28 (8700) May 15 [4]
Midville, GA 202 (9908)3 May 11 [12]4 13 (9708) May 17 [10] 24 (8700) May 22 [8]
Plains, GA 17 (9908) May 02 [2] 27 (9708) May 07 [8] 10 (9498) May 14 [3]
Quincy, FL 5 (9800) Jun 14 [15]
Tifton, GA 25 (9908) Apr 27 [3] 47 (9708) Mar 24 [14] 15 (9708) Apr 22 [15] 20 (8792) May 23 [5]
Total 62 64 55 134
1
Date of planting, mean values.
2
The total number of observation in various seasons.
3
Figures in parentheses are years during which the yield data were available. For instance (99-08), means from 1999 through 2008.
4
Figures in square brackets are standard deviation of planting dates.

lected from various sources. For locations in Florida, the
weather data were obtained from the Florida Automated
Weather Network (FAWN) and the Florida State University
Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies (FSU-
COAPS). For Georgia, the data were obtained from the
Georgia Automated Environmental Monitoring Network.
Using daily historical weather data, the value of ARID
for a location j, year k and day t (ARIDj,k,t) was computed
and later converted to the (1-ARIDj,k,t) value. For each
location and year, then, the data set of the (1-ARIDj,k,t) val-
ues during the crop growing season was split into five suc-
cessive 30-day (monthly) subsets and averaged by subset to
create five successive monthly mean values, one for each
designated crop stage m (1-ARIDj,k,m).
Because basic plant physiological processes are expected
to be independent of year and location, crop stage-specific
sensitivity to water stress was assumed to be the same
across years and locations. The sensitivity was assumed to
depend only on crop and phenological stage. The sensitiv-
ity coefficient for crop i at stage m, ki,m, was estimated
regressing Eqn 9, the linearized form of Eqn 8. The relative
yield for crop i in location j and year k, Ri,j,k, was calculated
from the observed values of rainfed yield (Yi,j,k) and irri-
gated yield (Pi,j,k) as Yi,j,k/Pi,j,k, considering the irrigated
yield as the potential yield.
  X 5   
ln Ri;j;k ki;m ln 1
ARIDj;k;m 9 fourth month (91120 DAP). In the case of cotton, the ki,m
m1
Once the values for the parameters of Eqn 8 (km, where
m = 1, 2, . . ., 5) were estimated for an ith crop, an ARID-
based empirical yield model was developed for that crop.
Then, using stage-specific monthly values of ARIDi,j,m in
the empirical yield models so developed, relative crop yields
(Ri,j,k) for the same locations and years belonging to the
observed yields were estimated for each crop. Finally, to
evaluate the performance of the yield models, estimated rel-
ative yields (Ri,j,k) were compared with computed relative
yields (Yi,j,k/Pi,j,k) using the mean absolute error (MAE), the
modelling efficiency (ME: Nash and Sutcliffe 1970), the
RMSE and the Willmott Index (d-index: Willmott 1981) as
the measures of goodness-of-fit. The steps involved in
designing and making computations are also summarized
in Table 2. The same steps and activities were applied for
each of the four crops cotton, maize, peanut and soybean.
Results
Sensitivity coefficients
The crop stage-specific water-stress sensitivity coefficients
(ki,m) estimated for the four crops are presented in Table 3.
According to the ki,m values, peanut was most sensitive to
water stress during the second month (3160 days after
planting; DAP). In the case of maize, the third month (61
90 DAP) was the most sensitive. The stage-specific sensitiv-
ity of maize to water deficit occurred in the following
(descending) order: the third month (flowering and polli-
nation stage), the fourth month (grain filling stage) and the
second month (vegetative stage). Both cotton and soybean
were shown to be most sensitive to water stress during the
value was negative for the second month.
Model performance
Values of the various measures of goodness-of-fit that were
used to evaluate the performance of the ARID-based rela-
tive yield models are presented in Table 4. Values of the

166 2014 Blackwell Verlag GmbH, 200 (2014) 163171

 ARID Predicting Crop Yields

RMSE for the four crops ranged from 0.09 to 0.14 (kg
ha
1 Y per kg ha
1 P). The difference between RMSE and
MAE was the smallest for peanut model, whereas the larg-
est for soybean model. The per cent error value of the
model, computed as the ratio of RMSE to mean relative
yield, was <23 % for all crops. The Willmott Index values
ranged from 0.70 (cotton) to 0.92 (maize). Similarly, the
ME value was largest for the maize model (0.73), whereas
smallest for the cotton model (0.33). The ARID-based yield
models predicted relative yields of the crops with mean
absolute errors of 0.07 to 0.13 (kg ha
1 Y per kg ha
1 P).
Discussion
Sensitivity coefficients
The occurrences of the most drought-sensitive stage of cot-
ton in the fourth month (peak flowering and boll develop-
ment), of maize in the third month (flowering and
pollination), of peanut in the second month (flowering and
pegging) and of soybean in the fourth month of the grow-
ing season (peak flowering and pod setting) as shown by
the sensitivity coefficients of the yield models developed in
this study were in good agreement with the findings of sev-
eral researchers. Salter and Goode (1967), Grimes et al.
(1970), Hiler and Clark (1971), Hiler et al. (1974) and
Doorenbos and Kassam (1979) found that peak flowering
and boll development are the most susceptible stages to
water stress for cotton, and the stress occurring during this
period causes severe yield loss in this crop. Peak flowering
and boll development stages fall in the fourth month of the
cotton-growing season (Grimes and El-Zik 1990). For
maize, Salter and Goode (1967) and Doorenbos and
Kassam (1979) observed that flowering and early grain
formation are the most critical stages of water requirement,
followed by the yield formation stage. Hiler and Clark
(1971), Hiler et al. (1974), and Kostandi and Soliman
(1998) also found the reproductive stage silking and tas-
selling to soft dough to be the most sensitive of all stages,
followed by the maturity stage after soft dough and ear
development. Because water deficit at silking, tasselling and
pollination is most detrimental to yield, the sensitivity of

Table 2 Steps involved in designing and making computations in this study

Step Activity

1 For crop i, location j, and year k, the highest yield (Yh) was obtained from the non-irrigated variety performance trial record. This was done
to reflect standard management; that is, to eliminate the effect of management variation across the locations and years
2 For the same crop, location, and year, two largest yields were picked from the irrigated trial record. For soybean, however, these yields were
the two largest yields from among the irrigated years which had no rainfed yields as this crop did not have both irrigated and rainfed yields
in a given year in any location
3 The two yields picked in step 2 were averaged and assumed to be the potential yield (P). This was done to reduce observation errors
4 The 95th percentile value of Yh obtained in step 1 was computed (=0.95Yh). Then, all yield values from the non-irrigated trial record that were
>0.95Yh were picked and considered as rainfed yields (Y). This was done to increase the number of observation
5 The planting and harvesting dates of the crops from the performance trial record were obtained, and from them were computed the length
of crop growing season (L, days)
6 The duration of L was split into five successive 30-day periods, one for each crop stage m: m1 = 130, m2 = 3160, m3 = 6190,
m4 = 91120, and m5 = 121150 days after planting. The five periods were assumed to approximate five growing stages: juvenile,
vegetative development, flowering, grain-filling, and ripening
7 The daily values of ARID for the crop season L were computed and converted into (1-ARID) values. Then, the values for the corresponding
five periods computed in step 6 were split and averaged by stage m
8 All the five stage-specific average (1-ARID) values were assigned to each yield value selected in step 4 as all the yield values had the same
length of growing season
9 The values computed in step 8 were converted into logarithmic values
10 The logarithmic value of relative yield (R) was computed using the P value computed in step 3 and Y values selected in step 4 for each value
of Y as: Ln(R) = Ln(Y)
Ln(P)
11 A 6-column table was prepared with the variables computed above: Ln(R), Ln(1-ARID)m1, Ln(1-ARID)m2, . . ., and Ln(1-ARID)m5
12 Steps 1 through 11 were repeated for each year for which the data were available. Then all yearly tables were combined to produce the
dataset for location j
13 Steps 1 through 12 were repeated for each location in the region for which the data were available. Then all location datasets were
combined to produce the dataset for crop i (i = cotton, maize, peanut, or soybean)
14 To estimate stage-specific sensitivity coefficients (km), Eqn 9 was regressed using the dataset produced in step 13, with Ln(R) as the
dependent and Ln(1-ARID)m1, . . ., Ln(1-ARID)m5 as the independent variables
15 A yield model was developed for crop i by plugging in the values of km estimated in step 14 in Eqn 8
16 Using Eqn 8, relative yields (Rs) were estimated for the same locations and years as the observed yields
17 To evaluate the performance of the yield model for crop i, the estimated Rs (step 16) were compared with the observed Rs computed
as Y (step 4) divided by P (step 3) by using various goodness-of-fit measures

2014 Blackwell Verlag GmbH, 200 (2014) 163171 167

Woli et al.

Table 3 Values of water-stress sensitivity coefficients (ki,m) for various 120 DAP (Reicosky and Heatherly 1990), is the most critical
crops and their phonological stages stage in terms of obtaining maximum yield.
Crop (i) Some researchers have also observed that a mild water
stress stimulates flower production in cotton (Cothren
Stage/month (m) Cotton Maize Peanut Soybean 1999). Water stress during the pre-flowering period of cot-
First (m = 1) 0.12 0.05 0.04 0.16 ton, which falls in the second month of the season (Grimes
Second (m = 2)
0.10 0.09 0.27 0.15 and El-Zik 1990), increases the number of flowers and bolls
Third (m = 3) 0.17 0.36 0.13 0.21 per plant and boll size in some cultivars causing increased
Fourth (m = 4) 0.34 0.11 0.08 0.30 yield (de Bruyn 1964, Singh 1975). With the negative value
Fifth (m = 5) 0.04 0.03 0.07 0.01 of the sensitivity coefficient for the second month for cot-
ton (
0.10), the cotton yield model was also able to reflect
the phenomenon of mild water stress increasing the yields
Table 4 Values of the various goodness-of-fit measures used to evalu-
ate the performance of ARID-based relative yield models for various of this crop.
crops Because the information given by the sensitivity coeffi-
cients estimated in this study, which were assumed to be
Crop (i)
regional, was in line with the findings of several other
Measure Cotton Maize Peanut Soybean researchers, the study results implied that all locations
within a region have the same stage-specific sensitivities of
Mean Y/P1 ratio (
) 0.68 0.71 0.78 0.62
a crop to water stress. The reasonable values of ki,m for each
MAE (kg ha
1 Y per kg ha
1 P) 0.13 0.07 0.08 0.12
RMSE (kg ha
1 Y per kg ha
1 P) 0.144 0.087 0.089 0.142
crop studied led to the conclusion that Eqn 9 expressed the
RMSE minus MAE 0.015 0.016 0.014 0.022 relationship between ARID and relative crop yields accu-
Modeling efficiency (
) 0.33 0.73 0.60 0.49 rately. The results further indicated that ARID can be used
Willmott d-index (
) 0.70 0.92 0.86 0.79 as a useful tool to detect the stage-specific sensitivity of
1
crops to water stress as well as the yield loss from drought.
Y, rainfed yield; P, potential (irrigated) yield; MAE, mean absolute
error; and RMSE, root mean square error.
Model performance
maize crop growth stages to water deficit occurs in the fol-
lowing order: flowering and pollination, grain filling, and Values of the various measures of goodness-of-fit showed
vegetative development (Musick and Dusek 1980). The that each of the four crop yield models performed reason-
vegetative stage of maize falls in the second month; the sil- ably well at predicting relative yields (Ri,j,k) and thus the
king, tasselling and pollination stages in the third month; yield losses from drought. The mean absolute errors and
and the grain filling stage in the fourth month after planting per cent errors of the ARID-based yield models were low
(Rhoads and Bennett 1990, Nielsen et al. 2002). In the case for all crops (713 % of potential yield). The difference
of peanut, Salter and Goode (1967), Hiler et al. (1974), between RMSE and MAE revealed that peanut had the
Doorenbos and Kassam (1979), and Ramamoorthy and smallest variance in individual errors, whereas soybean had
Basu (1996) found the period between peak flowering and the largest. Values of the Willmott Index, a measure of the
early pegging, which fall during 3557 DAP, to be the most degree to which the observed values are approached by the
susceptible period to drought. The most critical stage of model-estimated values, indicated that the yield model for
peanut crop to water stress is flowering, which starts at maize agreed most closely with the observed data, whereas
about 35 DAP and peaks around 63 DAP, and water deficit the yield model for cotton agreed the least. Values of ME, a
at flowering and pegging stages causes greater yield loss than measure to assess the predictive power of models, also indi-
that at other growth stages (Boote and Ketring 1990). The cated that the agreement between the model-estimated and
greatest effect of water deficit on economic yields has been observed values was best for maize model and relatively
reported to have been during flowering or anthesis because poor for cotton model. Although modelling efficiency
of reduction in grain numbers (Howell 1990). For soybean, varied across yield models, all yield models performed
Salter and Goode (1967), Hiler and Clark (1971), Hiler reasonably well. The positive values of ME indicated that
et al. (1974), Doorenbos and Kassam (1979), Kpoghomou model predictions were more accurate than the means of
et al. (1990), and de Bruyn et al. (1995) observed that the the observed data.
most sensitive stages of this crop to water deficit are peak The predicted relative yield of cotton ranged from 0.46
flowering and pod set. Brown et al. (1985) found this crop to 0.90, whereas the observed relative yield ranged from
to be most susceptible to drought around 100 DAP, with 0.31 to 0.99. For maize, the ranges of predicted and
both weight and number of seed reduced. Doss et al. (1974) observed relative yields were (0.33, 0.97) and (0.22, 1.00),
concluded that the pod-filling stage, which falls around 90 respectively. The predicted relative yield range for peanut

168 2014 Blackwell Verlag GmbH, 200 (2014) 163171


was between 0.51 and 0.98, whereas the observed yield
range was between 0.40 and 0.99. For soybean, the pre-
dicted and observed relative yield ranges were (0.23, 0.85)
and (0.10, 1.00), respectively. In other words, the width of
the range of predicted yields relative to that of the observed
yields for cotton, maize, peanut and soybean was 0.64,
0.83, 0.80 and 0.68, respectively. Based on these figures
also, the four crop yield models were ranked in terms of
descending performance as: maize, peanut, soybean and
cotton. The different performances across crops were possi-
bly due to variations in drought tolerance among the four
crops. Of the four yield models, the performance of maize
model was best because maize is more sensitive to water
deficit than are the other crops compared (Sangoi and Sal-
vador 1998, Heiniger 2001, PIDS 2010). The performance
of the cotton model was poorest among the crops, likely
because cotton is the most drought-tolerant crop among
the four crops compared (Rosenow et al. 1983, Edmisten
et al. 1994, Malik et al. 2006, Lv et al. 2007, Basal et al.
2009). The performances of peanut and soybean models
were intermediate as these crops are less tolerant to
drought than is cotton and also less susceptible to drought
than is maize. These results indicated that ARID-based
yield models perform better for the crops that are more
sensitive to water deficit.
Despite large variations in observed yield data due to
location differences in weather, soil, management, culti-
vars and dates of planting and harvesting, the ARID-
based relative yield models estimated the overall effects
of drought on yields of cotton, maize, peanut and soy-
bean reasonably well. The results indicated that ARID
has potential to predict the yield loss from drought for
several field crops, especially the ones that are more sen-
sitive to water stress.
Acknowledgement
The authors thank the USDA National Institute for Food
and Agriculture and the NOAA Regional Integrated Sci-
ences and Assessments program for supporting this work
through grants.
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