This separates if you are harvesting the whole plant or just part of it (e.g. the top of the corn stalk vs the whole plant). In each case, checking this box will mean COMET Farm and Daycent will assume a default value for “Residue Removal” (how much of the above ground biomass you removed at harvest).
For grains, checking this box means you only harvested the grain and not the full plant. There is a default assumed value for “residue removal” for each crop when this is checked and you don’t need to enter a value (e.g. 50-60% of a corn crop is assumed removed when only the grain is harvested).
With barley or oats, they frequently grow it as a hay crop and will grow it really high and then harvest the whole plant. They won’t remove just the grain. In this case, you would not check this box and instead would enter that 100% of the residue was removed (e.g. 100% of the above ground biomass was removed).For fruits, checking this box means you only harvested the fruit and not the whole plant. Again, there is a default assumed value for “residue removal” for each crop when this is checked and you do not need to enter a value (for most fruits, it is assumed that no residue is removed as the plant is left to grow fruit in the future).
For root crops (potatoes, sugar beets, carrots, etc), checking this box means you harvested the tubers (roots) of the plant. The tuber is almost always the edible part of the plant. When roots are harvested (e.g. potatoes, carrots, sugar beets, etc.) usually none of the other aboveground biomass is harvested. There are some exceptions, however we generally assume 0% of the residual biomass is harvested and let the user change that if needed. Checking this box assumes 0% of the biomass was removed at harvest.