to sugarbeet (Jones et al.
2003; Richter et al. 2006) and to other crops (Richter
& Semenov 2005). Some of the changes to the climate
are likely to have positive impacts on beet yields ;
Scott & Jaggard (2000) attempted to analyse these
changes. The present paper describes a more formal
analysis of the climate change effects by using yield
simulations made with a simulation model and with
the UK daily weather records to assess the impact
of climate on yield over the last three decades and
compares these simulations with the UK national
harvested yield and official variety trial results.
The study used the Broom’s Barn Crop Growth
Model (Qi et al. 2005), which has been validated and
tested under different environmental conditions and
for a number of cultivars. The model runs on a daily
time step and is not variety-specific. It simulates:
the effects of temperature on seedling emergence, the
growth of foliage cover and the development of the
root system down through the soil profile; the effects
of solar radiation, as intercepted by the foliage,