Crop lodging induced by wind and rain

- Plants can be modelled as damped harmonic oscillators.
- The can be used UKCP09 to infer wind and rain scenarios.
- The failure velocity of oats, wheat, barley, and rapeseed, ranges between 4-23 ms−1 for rain that is exceeded 50% of time.
- The plants' failure velocity is constant after a threshold precipitation value. After that point stem failure dominates.

A methodology to estimate wind and rain effects on the four main growth crops in the United Kingdom is presented. The method is based on simulated weather scenarios acting on synthetic plants over a period of thirty years. The environmental data is generated with the UKCP09 Weather Generator considering future climate scenarios whereas plants are modelled as simple oscillators characterised by their mass, stiffness and damping. The joint probability of occurrence of wind and rain are estimated together with the conditions in which lodging would occur. The paper shows that the dynamic response of plants varies with season being the first three months of the year the most critical whilst the plants' performances define crop failure velocities ranging between 4 ms−1 and 23 ms−1 and associated failure rates of 50% and 5% per unitary velocity.