Research advance on vegetable growth models in China

Vegetable growth models are crucial tools for predicting crop productivity under various environments. They could dynamically simulate the basic processes of vegetable growth and development, and also reflects the impact of different environmental factors and management practices on these processes. Foreign scholars have constructed vegetable growth models since the 1980s, including models of greenhouse cucumbers, tomatoes, bell peppers, onions, and other major vegetable crops. However, the history and progress of domestic vegetable model development in China are not yet clear. We reviewed the history of vegetable model research development in China, which started relatively late but had developed rapidly in recent years. It has evolved from initially verifying and expanding available foreign models to essentially achieving localization, process-oriented, and integration of vegetable models. Nevertheless, domestic models still face problems such as poor universality, insufficient simulation performance in facility environments, lack of unified standards for model development, limited consideration of simulation for vegetable cultivation management practices, and weak mechanistic simulation of vegetable quality. Future research needs to balance complexity with high accuracy, universality, and mechanistic understanding.