Cardinal temperatures and modeling of vegetative development in guava

ABSTRACT The aim of this study was to estimate cardinal temperatures (base, optimum, and maximum), and simulate the vegetative development of guava crop through phyllochron (linear) and Wang and Engel (nonlinear) models at the seedling phase. The experiment was conducted in Itajubá, MG, Brazil (22° 24’ 46.43” S 45° 26’ 48.94” W), for two years in a completely randomized design with twelve sowing dates and five experimental units per treatment, totaling sixty experimental units. The cardinal temperatures were estimated using twelve methods described in the literature and the values were: base, 10.9 °C, optimum, 17.3 °C and maximum, 51.2 °C. The phyllochron model was superior to Wang and Engel’s model for simulation of vegetative growth of guava, with root mean square error of 1.5 leaves.