Functional–structural plant modelling

Abstract

strategies are influenced by topological constraints, namely hydraulics and biomechanics, and how plants regulate biomass investment in order to achieve multiple purpose optimisation. This illustrates the usefulness of FSPMs to understand interactions between multiple processes better. Plant as a networkThe plant structure provides the support for different forms of fluxes (water, sugars) and signals (mechanical constraints, hormones) that control the plant functioning and growth. Models of water transport have been developed in the past decade and rely on the application of Darcy's law to express the relationship between fluxes and water potential in porous media, (e.g. Früh & Kurth, 1999). More recently, the simulation of mechanical stress and strains in plants has been considered by several teams ( Jirasek et al ., 2000; Alméras et al ., 2002; Fourcaud & Lac, 2003) and is now considered to be a tractable issue. The problem of carbon transport and allocation is more complex because the underlying physiological processes are difficult to observe and are not yet well understood. Current modelling approaches use different variants of the concept of source and sink strength, reviewed in this issue by this issue). The authors suggest that a 'minimal Münch model' can provide a sound and general theoretical framework to model carbon transport, where allocation priorities are an emergent property of the model. this issue) illustrate this approach by describing a transport-resistance model based on the integration of similar assumptions for carbohydrate flow and allocation and  -systems for studying the growth of peach trees. Plant as a developing organismThe growth of the plant continuously modifies the network of components and space occupation, which in turn changes the general balance between organ demand and production. This dynamic feedback between structure and function is probably one key issue in the understanding of plant development which necessitates further theoretical and applied developments. Current work in this area consists of developing mechanistic models that integrate models of physiological processes and descriptive information where knowledge of the underlying mechanisms is lacking. Knowledge is usually expressed at the metamer or growth unit level, and the growth of the entire organism is considered as an emerging property of the locally defined interactions between plant components or between plant components and environmental factors. Two approaches in this issue were designed to study the effect of environmental factors (here, light) on plant growth. , this issue) adopted a detailed descriptive approach to model the growth of wheat. The variation of architectural variables throughout time (e.g. leaf dimensions, internode length, phyllochrone and leaf number) was estimated according to field measurements or bibliographic data. this issue) designed a model where each metamer can produce a flush of growth. Flushes are controlled by the product of probabilities, depending on their metamer...

An Evaluative Review of Simulated Dynamic Smart 3d Objects

“…Through the combination of geometric and process-based models, a functional-structural plant model can be created. The principles and exploration behind these models are beginning to be detailed in the literature (Godin & Sinoquet, 2005;Vos et. al., 2010) with applications seen within scientific research (Sarlikioti et.…”

“…al., 2010). Modelling growth has become key research activity within the fields of agriculture, forestry and environmental sciences (Godin & Sinoquet, 2005;Fourcaud et. al., 2008).…”

CN-Wheat, a functional–structural model of carbon and nitrogen metabolism in wheat culms after anthesis. I. Model description

“…Functional-structural plant models (FSPMs) represent one approach in the description of plants in sub-systems; here the plant is described as a collection of interconnected organs (Prusinkiewicz and Lindenmayer, 1990;Godin and Sinoquet, 2005). FSPMs consist in an explicit description of plant architecture, making it possible to specify the environment perceived by phytoelements.…”

Combining Finite Element Method and L-Systems Using Natural Information Flow Propagation to Simulate Growing Dynamical Systems

“…To understand the key processes that control this development, a new type of modeling approach, called Functional-Structural Plant Models (FSPM) [8,19,17], has been developed in the last two decades. FSPMs combine a detailed description the plant architecture (in terms of axes or stem units) and physiological processes that participate to the branching system development (photosynthesis, water/sugar/mineral element transport, carbon allocation, bud growth, hormonal transport and regulation, interaction with gravity, etc.…”