The objective of this work was to evaluate and compare the Phyllochron and the Wang and Engel models for estimation of leaves appearance in seedlings of Eucalyptus grandis and E. saligna. Two experiments were carried out in Santa Maria during 2005 and 2006. One was a field experiment with nine sowing dates, and the other was a greenhouse experiment with two sowing dates. Phyllochron model assumes a linear relationship between leaf appearance rate and temperature, and the Wang and Engel model assumes a non-linear relationship between leaf appearance number and temperature. Four sowing dates from the field experiment were used to estimate the models coefficients and the other sowing dates of the field and greenhouse experiments were used as independent data to evaluate the models. The Wang and Engel model better estimated the number of leaves, comprising a root mean square error (RMSE) of 2.7 and 3.7 leaves compared with the Phyllocron model with RMSE of 7.1 and 10 leaves for E. grandis and E. saligna, respectively.
Eucalyptus grandis; Eucalyptus saligna; plant development; thermal time; leaf appearance rate
