A morphogenetic crop model for sugar-beet (Beta vulgaris L.)

TL;DR

This paper develops a morphogenetic crop model for sugar beet using the GreenLab framework, capturing plant architecture and growth dynamics to improve understanding and simulation of biomass production and allocation.

Contribution

It introduces a novel morphogenetic modeling approach for sugar beet, integrating plant architecture and source-sink relationships based on experimental data.

Findings

Good fit of the model to experimental data

Model effectively simulates organogenesis and biomass partitioning

Framework shows potential for analyzing growth dynamics

Abstract

This paper is the instructions for the proceeding of the International Symposium on Crop. Sugar beet crop models have rarely taken into account the morphogenetic process generating plant architecture despite the fact that plant architectural plasticity plays a key role during growth, especially under stress conditions. The objective of this paper is to develop this approach by applying the GreenLab model of plant growth to sugar beet and to study the potential advantages for applicative purposes. Experiments were conducted with husbandry practices in 2006. The study of sugar beet development, mostly phytomer appearance, organ expansion and leaf senescence, allowed us to define a morphogenetic model of sugar beet growth based on GreenLab. It simulates organogenesis, biomass production and biomass partitioning. The functional parameters controlling source-sink relationships during plant growth were estimated from organ and compartment dry masses, measured at seven different times, for samples of plants. The fitting results are good, which shows that the introduced framework is adapted to analyse source-sink dynamics and shoot-root allocation throughout the season. However, this approach still needs to be fully validated, particularly among seasons.