Plant structure and production models offer a wide range of applications from 3D representation to crop optimizing.

Plants grow slowly and they seem frozen in their architecture.
By modelling the development of their structure and the growth of their organs, by simulating them on computers, we can grasp these dynamics and predict and optimize plant production.



Real-time 3D landscape mock-up produced by the LandSim3D^® tool (BIONATICS SA) with IGN BDTopo^® and BDOrtho^® data, and the AMAP virtual plant generator. (© Bionatics and IGN).

To simulate virtual plants, computer models can be defined from botanical studies, and introduced in virtual landscapes with automated planting software tools.
By introducing the basis of eco-physiology and agronomy, it is possible to differenciate growth simulation according to environmental conditions, such as temperature and light availability.

This section provides an overview of such approaches, highlighting the following aspects:

• Plant growth results from two processes: establishment of the structure (plant architecture), and the increase in size of its components (biomass production).


• The structure is established by way of a space conquering strategy, which can be described by botanical architectural concepts and simulated by computerized rules.


• Biomass production results from leaf functioning and can be modelled by compartment dynamic models.


• Modelling both structural and functional aspects defines structural functional models.


• In the GreenLab model, for each growth cycle the organs compete for biomass stored in a common pool.
  All organs of the same age and same morphological stage share the same fate.
  This model can thus be efficiently factorized, expressed by mathematical equations, and can then be easily reversed.


• A wide range of applications may arise from structural functional plant models:
  - from simple 3D representations derived from computational approaches
  - to agronomic optimization, using model reversion.

The aim of this course is to enable students to:


• Discover plant growth structural and functional modelling and its interests


• Understand that plant growth reflects both structure establishment and biomass production


• Learn that structure establishment can be modelled from botanical architectural concepts


• Learn that biomass production can be modelled from eco-physiological concepts


• Understand that, under specific hypotheses, mathematical factorization can be used to model structure and biomass production


• See that plant structural functional models range from simple simulation outputs (3D plant representations) to complex model inversion (agronomic optimization).