Abstract: In this study, a controlled experiment of winter wheat under water stress at the seedling stage was conducted in soil columns in greenhouse. Based on the data gotten from the experiment, a model to estimate root length density distribution was developed through optimizing the weights of neural network by genetic algorithm. The neural network model was constructed by using forward neural network framework, by applying the strategy of the roulette wheel selection and reserving the most optimizing series of weights, which were composed by real codes. This model was applied to predict the root length density distribution of winter wheat, and the predicted root length density had good agreement with experiment data. The way could save a lot of manpower and material resources for determining the root length density distribution of winter wheat.

Key words: Artificial neural network, Genetic algorithm, Water stress, Root length density distribution, Prediction