PhD Candidate Institute of Bio-and Geoscience: Agrosphere (IBG-3), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH Frechen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany
Body of Abstract: M Giraud, FM Bauer, D Leitner, G Lobet, A Schnepf
Modelling offers a very useful tool to predict and understand the changes in plant development under different environmental conditions or genotypic traits, which can facilitate the selection of the best practices in response to conflicting demands. Functional-structural plant models (FSPM) are a type of plant model, which can describe both the structure of the plant (geometry and topology) and selected physiological processes (functions). They are therefore at the perfect scale to mechanistically represent complex spatio-temporal interactions at the organ or plant scale within a single conceptual scheme and study emergent properties observed at bigger (e.g., field) scales, explaining their underlying causes. Moreover, their modular nature makes it possible to improve the models as more knowledge becomes available and adapt the trade-off between accuracy and simplicity.
CPlantBox2.0 simulates processes that are already present in other FSPMs, like a 3D representation of full plants; phloem and xylem fluxes; distributed sucrose sources, sinks, and storage in the plant; water and carbon dependent growth; coupled soil, rhizosphere and root water flux; coupled stomatal opening and photosynthesis. The novel aspect of this latest implementation of CPlantBox comes from linking all of these modules within one single framework to represent the carbon and water fluxes in a dynamic soil-plant-atmosphere-continuum. This allows us to look at the interactions over time between processes which have been, until know, often studied separately in in silico studies at the plant scale.
In the next steps of the work, the newer modules of CPlantBox2.0 (assimilation, flow, and usage of carbon) will be parametrized and tested using experimental observations.