An empirical on-farm yield plateau (i.e. the likely peak or
achievable yield of a given plantation), YOF, was estimated using the
time series of site-specific commercially harvested oven dry matter
yield reported in the survey. Unlike arable or fodder crops,maximum
and peak productivity of a Miscanthus crop can take three to five
years after planting [19,20]. In the case of long and complete time
series (10e15 years) such as the plot size experiments at Rothamsted
Research, a double exponential model [21] was found most appropriate
to describe the first phase rise and the final phase decline of
obtainable biomass yields (Y) over years after planting (X) as
observed in many other experimental data [22]: