Role of specific growth rate in the development of different growth processes

Abstract

Effort has been given for the development of an analytical approach that helps to address several sigmoidal and non-sigmoidal growth processes found in literature. In the proposed approach, the role of specific growth rate in different growth processes has been considered in an unified manner. It is found that the different growth equations can be derived from the same functional form of rate equation of specific growth rate. A common functional form of growth and growth velocity have been derived analytically and it has been shown that different values of the parameters involved in the description lead to different growth function. The theta logistic growth can be explained in this proposed framework. It is found that the competitive environment may increase the saturation level of population size.