About Lesson
- Every plant community has its own minimum, optimum and maximum temperature known as their cardinal temperature.
- These critical low and high temperatures are required for better growth and development of crops.
- The three types of temperature ranges are:
- Optimum temperature
- The temperature at which a plant functions best is called as the optimum temperature.
- The ideal temperature conditions for crop production are in the range of 31-37oC for hot season and 25-31oC for cool season crops.
- Maximum temperature
- Maximum temperature is the one that can be tolerate without injury to crop plants. The maximum temperature tolerance varies greatly with the crop species. Above which plant growth
- The tolerable maximum temperature for hot season is 44-50oC and cool season crop is 31-35oC.
- Minimum temperature
- Minimum temperature is the temperature at which any plant can continue its activity and below which no growth occurs.
- It is approximately the freezing point of water. The growth of many of the tropical plants is retarded at 20oC and are frequently killed at 10oC.
- The tolerance range of minimum temperature for cool season crops ranges between 0-5oC and hot season crop 15-18oC.
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