All life forms on Earth depend on water. Water is constantly absorbed or excreted and holds various physiological and biochemical functions. Depending on water needs, plants and their parts differ. When focusing on limiting factors for growth and development of a plant, water is considered one of the biggest and most important factors due to the fact that plants need relatively large amounts of it.
Information on the soil moisture is necessary for timely and efficient irrigation. Global trends in the world of irrigation focus on determining the accurate amounts of water for healthy plant growth and development, without any yield losses. In order to achieve the aforementioned, several methods are being used for determining the soil moisture:
Simply put, the temperature sum represents accumulated heat energy over a period of time. Heat is one of the most important factors in the plant and animal world. Considering the fact that the heat can not be measured, while the temperature can, a model of effective temperature sums has been developed.