Biomass production and carbon stocks estimate in mango orchards of hot and sub-humid climate in eastern region, India

A study was conducted on mango orchards with different collar diameter in the age group 2-10 years old with the objective of finding out the best growth model for prediction of biomass and carbon stock. The biomass components of mango trees in the orchard were measured and fitted to various growth models, namely Linear, Allometric, Logistic, Gompertz, Richard's, Negative exponential, Monomolecular, Mitcherlich and Weibull to find out the parameter estimates of the models and validated the best fitted model. Among the models, Gompertz was found best suited for prediction of biomass and carbon stock in mango orchards. The various criteria selected for best fitted model having lowest Akaike information criteria (AICc) of 90.62, lowest root mean square error (RMSE) of 1.56 kg tree(-1) and highest adjusted R-2 of 0.973. The predicted total biomass varied from 0.53 to 10.5 Mg ha(-1) with mean annual increment of 0.26-1.05 Mg ha(-1) in 2-10-year-old mango orchards. The highest predicted total biomass carbon in a 10-year-old mango orchard with an average collar diameter of 14.33 cm was 3.87 Mg ha(-1). The carbon mitigation potential of a 10-year-old mango orchard was highest with 3.0 Mg ha(-1) with a corresponding carbon dioxide mitigation of 11.04 Mg ha(-1) in hot and sub-humid climate.