Analysis and modelling of water and near water temperatures in flooded rice (Oryza sativa L.)

The results show that the models could improve the performances of crop simulation models physically based, currently used for crop growth, development and production analysis. In fact, the comparison between measured and simulated temperature values indicates that both the presented models are able to reproduce the effect of water on temperature (average RRMSE = 14% for the mechanistic model and 7% for the empirical one; modelling efficiency always positive).