Modeling the regrowth of forage grasses: simulating growth, partitioning, and carbon and nitrogen metabolism.

Reserves play an important role in plants undergoing stress. Plants adapted to defoliation use reserve compounds to regrow leaf area. Modeling grass regrowth should account for these processes. A field experiment was conducted in Gainesville, FL, to study herbage production, partitioning and mobilization of reserve compounds of two tropical grasses (Jiggs bermudagrass and Mulato-2 brachiaria grass), under the combination of two light levels ? 56% and 100% solar radiation, and two N rates ? 30 and 120 kg N ha-1 after each harvest. Herbage mass was quantified at harvest every 28 days.