Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
understanding within their peer-group. A key task for horticultural scientist is the
integration of knowledge across these disciplines.
The advent of new regulations in horticulture (e.g. the Ecophyto 2018 round
table of the French government, which is foreseeing a considerable reduction of
pesticides) spells new challenges for all participants in the production chain, includ-
ing researchers. Sustainable and “ecologically intensive” horticulture is to become
the new standard, and this means that a different, “systems biology” perception of
horticulture is required, which will be able integrate more effectively the informa-
tion stemming from the different disciplines and levels, and in doing so help to
solve the challenges lying ahead for global food production. Such an integrative
biology for horticulture constitutes the insight that we are dealing with multi-scaled,
modular, and complex systems, which cannot be satisfactorily described, explained,
or optimized while remaining within the “comfort zone” as it were, of a single
discipline. It rather implies the willingness to be radically multidisciplinary and
interdisciplinary. Multidisciplinarity means that existing heterogeneous knowledge
and information sources need to be linked and integrated with the help of suit-
able interfaces, while interdisciplinarity would go a step further by entering the
well-known feedback loop of systems biology (“experiment → model → improved
experimental design → experiment → …”), thereby moving towards
horticultural
systems biology
.
Functional-Structural Plant Modelling: A Tool for Data
Integration and Systems Analysis
Functional-structural plant modelling (FSPM) refers to a paradigm for the descrip-
tion of a plant by creating an object-oriented computer model of its structure and se-
lected physiological and physical processes, at different hierarchical levels: organ,
plant individual, canopy, and in which the processes are modulated by the local
environment. Structure comprises the explicit topology and geometry of the organs
and the plant. At the individual level, this is also referred to as plant architecture.
An FSPM may consider a change in organ and plant structure in time, thereby simu-
lating the growth, extension, and branching processes of a given plant. This type
of FSPM is referred to as dynamic. A static FSPM, in contrast, only considers an
unchanging structure, one or several virtual plant individuals which are used as a
model input in order to explain spatial and temporal heterogeneity in physiological
processes (Buck-Sorlin
2012
, in press).
A natural extension of the FSPM concept is the model representation of the gen-
otype and the phenotype: whereas the “phenotype” thus constitutes the FSPM de-
fined above (with explicit three-dimensional morphology, basic eco-physiological
processes, transport, and environmental sensitivity), the “genotype” can be repre-
sented by a set of variables that stand for genes or quantitative trait loci (QTLs), or
else a set of regulatory networks if appropriate. Furthermore, model provisions to
link the core FSPM (phenotype) with the genotype are required.
