Abstract: Among the two types of models that can be used for simulating the main physiological processes that affect crop yield under water deficit stress, a distinction can be made between water management models that do not explicitly simulate crop growth but that have been developed for irrigation planning, and crop growth simulation models that simulate main processes of crop growth (leaf area growth, biomass production and partition). Crop growth models usually estimate the effects of drought stress on carbon assimilation by use of the ratio of actual transpiration to potential transpiration. In recent years, the proposed coupled models that couple the processes of carbon assimilation, transpiration, energy balance, and stomatal behavior improve mechanisms in simulation of the effects of drought stress on crop production. This study synthesizes the mechanisms involved in the different models (FAO water production function, AquaCrop, CERESMaize, WOFOST, EPICphase and coupled models) and presents the main processes of these typi-cal models on how to simulate the drought stress effect on crop growth and development. Based on above discussion, further research in the crop production models is proposed, such as improving the simulation of the effects of drought stress on crop penology, considering the response of anthesissilking interval to water deficit, considering the mechanisms of subsequent effects of drought stress after water recover, developing more physically and physiologically based models. Additionally, effective multidisciplinary collaboration between model programmers, field experimentalists, and plant physiologists will be necessary to model enhancements. Field experiment is an important data source for model developments and enhancements.

Key words: biological factor, non biological factor., symbiosis, non-mycorrhizal plant