Simulation of Soil Water Movement and Root Uptake under Mulched Drip Irrigation of Greenhouse Tomatoes

Abstract

Three irrigation treatments were set up in northeast China to investigate soil water movement and root water uptake of greenhouse tomatoes, and the collected experimental data were simulated by HYDRUS-2D. The computation and partitioning of evapotranspiration data into soil evaporation and crop transpiration was carried out with the double-crop coefficient method. The HYDRUS-2D model successfully simulated the soil water movement, producing RMSE ranging from 0.014 to 0.027, an MRE ranging from 0.062 to 0.126, and R2 ranging from 79% to 92%, when comparing model simulations with two-year field measurements. Under different water treatments, 83–90% of the total root quantity was concentrated in 0–20 cm soil layer, and the more the water deficit, the more water the deeper roots will absorb to compensate for the lack of water at the surface. The average area of soil water shortage in W1 was 2.08 times that in W2. W3 treatment hardly suffered from water stress. In the model, parameter n had the highest sensitivity compared with parameters α and Ks, and sensitivity ranking was n > Ks > α. This research revealed the relationships between soil, crop and water under drip irrigation of greenhouse tomatoes, and parameter sensitivity analysis could guide the key parameter adjustment and improve the simulation efficiency of the model.