Response to Zhang et al.'s Comment on 'Modeling Miscanthus in the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) to Simulate Its Water Quality Effects as a Bioenergy Crop'

摘要

We thank Zhang et al. for their valuable comment. We agree V V that the root-to-shoot ratio is an important crop growth parameter. We would like to add that miscanthus, being a perennial, has a root system which is an accumulation of previous years' biomass development. Therefore, its root biomass (including rhizome biomass) is a dynamic variable that can be expected to increase from growing season to growing season in the initial few years after planting, and possibly to plateau after the third-fifth growing season, although the maximum below-ground biomass attained, and the growing seasons needed to attain it, are questions that merit further research.