Functional-Structural Plant Modelling in Crop Production

Functional-Structural Plant Modelling in Crop Production
Author: J. Vos
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2007-03-30
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9781402060328

This book describes the philosophy of functional-structural plant modelling and several tools for making FSPMs; it outlines methods for measuring essential parameters, including those pertaining to plant structure. As FSPMs offer new opportunities to model sink–source interactions, the physiological theory and modelling approaches regarding partitioning of carbon are given specific attention. The book is for anyone interested in innovative approaches to plant and crop modelling.

Advances in Crop Modelling for a Sustainable Agriculture

Advances in Crop Modelling for a Sustainable Agriculture
Author: Kenneth Boote
Publisher: Burleigh Dodds Series in Agric
Total Pages: 420
Release: 2019-10-22
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 9781786762405

Crop modelling has huge potential to improve decision making in farming. This collection reviews advances in next-generation models focused on user needs at the whole farm system and landscape scale.

Virtual Plants: Modeling Plant Architecture in Changing Environments

Virtual Plants: Modeling Plant Architecture in Changing Environments
Author: Katrin Kahlen
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Total Pages: 110
Release: 2017-02-07
Genre:
ISBN: 2889450929

Plant architecture is a major determinant of the resource use efficiency of crops. The architecture of a plant shows ontogenetic structural changes which are modified by multiple environmental factors: Plant canopies are exposed to natural fluctuations in light quantity and the dynamically changing canopy architecture induces local variations in light quality. Changing temperature conditions or water availability during growth additionally affect plant architecture and thus crop productivity, because plants have various options to adapt their architecture to the available resources. Meeting the challenge of ensuring food security we must understand the plant’s mechanisms for integrating and responding to an orchestra of environmental factors. ‘Virtual plants’ describe plant architecture in silico. Virtual plants have the potential to help us understanding the complex feedback processes between canopy architecture, multiple environmental factors and crop productivity. As a research tool, they have become increasingly popular within the last decade due to their great power of realistically visualizing the plant’s architecture. This Research Topic highlights current research carried out on modeling plant architecture in changing environments.

Model Plants and Crop Improvement

Model Plants and Crop Improvement
Author: Rajeev K. Varshney
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2006-09-29
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1420004611

Bringing together experts from across the globe, Model Plants and Crop Improvement provides a critical assessment of the potential of model plant species for crop improvement. The first comprehensive summary of the use of model plant systems, the book delineates the model species' contribution to understanding the genomes of crop species. It provides an in-depth examination of the achievements and limitations of the model paradigm and explores how continued research in models can contribute to the goal of delivering the outputs of molecular biology to crops. This timely volume is the first comprehensive summary for studying the development of plant species of particular agricultural significance.

Competition and Coexistence

Competition and Coexistence
Author: Ulrich Sommer
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3642561667

The question "Why are there so many species?" has puzzled ecologist for a long time. Initially, an academic question, it has gained practical interest by the recent awareness of global biodiversity loss. Species diversity in local ecosystems has always been discussed in relation to the problem of competi tive exclusion and the apparent contradiction between the competitive exclu sion principle and the overwhelming richness of species found in nature. Competition as a mechanism structuring ecological communities has never been uncontroversial. Not only its importance but even its existence have been debated. On the one extreme, some ecologists have taken competi tion for granted and have used it as an explanation by default if the distribu tion of a species was more restricted than could be explained by physiology and dispersal history. For decades, competition has been a core mechanism behind popular concepts like ecological niche, succession, limiting similarity, and character displacement, among others. For some, competition has almost become synonymous with the Darwinian "struggle for existence", although simple plausibility should tell us that organisms have to struggle against much more than competitors, e.g. predators, parasites, pathogens, and envi ronmental harshness.

Canopy Photosynthesis: From Basics to Applications

Canopy Photosynthesis: From Basics to Applications
Author: Kouki Hikosaka
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 450
Release: 2015-12-17
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9401772916

The last 30 years has seen the development of increasingly sophisticated models that quantify canopy carbon exchange. These models are now essential parts of larger models for prediction and simulation of crop production, climate change, and regional and global carbon dynamics. There is thus an urgent need for increasing expertise in developing, use and understanding of these models. This in turn calls for an advanced, yet easily accessible textbook that summarizes the “canopy science” and introduces the present and the future scientists to the theoretical background of the current canopy models. This book presents current knowledge of functioning of plant canopies, models and strategies employed to simulate canopy function, and the significance of canopy architecture, physiology and dynamics in ecosystems, landscape and biosphere.

Modeling and Control of Greenhouse Crop Growth

Modeling and Control of Greenhouse Crop Growth
Author: Francisco Rodríguez
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2014-11-01
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 3319111345

A discussion of challenges related to the modeling and control of greenhouse crop growth, this book presents state-of-the-art answers to those challenges. The authors model the subsystems involved in successful greenhouse control using different techniques and show how the models obtained can be exploited for simulation or control design; they suggest ideas for the development of physical and/or black-box models for this purpose. Strategies for the control of climate- and irrigation-related variables are brought forward. The uses of PID control and feedforward compensators, both widely used in commercial tools, are summarized. The benefits of advanced control techniques—event-based, robust, and predictive control, for example—are used to improve on the performance of those basic methods. A hierarchical control architecture is developed governed by a high-level multiobjective optimization approach rather than traditional constrained optimization and artificial intelligence techniques. Reference trajectories are found for diurnal and nocturnal temperatures (climate-related setpoints) and electrical conductivity (fertirrigation-related setpoints). The objectives are to maximize profit, fruit quality, and water-use efficiency, these being encouraged by current international rules. Illustrative practical results selected from those obtained in an industrial greenhouse during the last eight years are shown and described. The text of the book is complemented by the use of illustrations, tables and real examples which are helpful in understanding the material. Modeling and Control of Greenhouse Crop Growth will be of interest to industrial engineers, academic researchers and graduates from agricultural, chemical, and process-control backgrounds.

Lindenmayer Systems, Fractals, and Plants

Lindenmayer Systems, Fractals, and Plants
Author: Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 127
Release: 2013-11-11
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 1475714289

1-systems are a mathematical formalism which was proposed by Aristid 1indenmayer in 1968 as a foundation for an axiomatic theory of develop ment. The notion promptly attracted the attention of computer scientists, who investigated 1-systems from the viewpoint of formal language theory. This theoretical line of research was pursued very actively in the seventies, resulting in over one thousand publications. A different research direction was taken in 1984 by Alvy Ray Smith, who proposed 1-systems as a tool for synthesizing realistic images of plants and pointed out the relationship between 1-systems and the concept of fractals introduced by Benoit Mandel brot. The work by Smith inspired our studies of the application of 1-systems to computer graphics. Originally, we were interested in two problems: • Can 1-systems be used as a realistic model of plant species found in nature? • Can 1-systems be applied to generate images of a wide class of fractals? It turned out that both questions had affirmative answers. Subsequently we found that 1-systems could be applied to other areas, such as the generation of tilings, reproduction of a geometric art form from East India, and synthesis of musical scores based on an interpretation of fractals. This book collects our results related to the graphical applications of- systems. It is a corrected version of the notes which we prepared for the ACM SIGGRAPH '88 course on fractals.

The Role of Plant Roots in Crop Production

The Role of Plant Roots in Crop Production
Author: Nand Kumar Fageria
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 471
Release: 2012-07-23
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1439867372

The Role of Plant Roots in Crop Production presents the state of knowledge on environmental factors in root growth and development and their effect on the improvement of the yield of annual crops. This book addresses the role of roots in crop production and includes references to numerous annual crops. In addition, it brings together the issues and the state-of-the-art technologies that affect root growth, with comprehensive reviews to facilitate efficient, sustainable, economical, and environmentally responsible crop production. Written for plant scientists, crop scientists, horticulturalists, and soil scientists, plant physiologists, breeders, environmental scientists, agronomists, and undergraduate and graduate students in different disciplines of agricultural science, The Role of Plant Roots in Crop Production: Addresses root architecture and development dynamics to help users improve crop productivity Emphasizes crop production, plant nutrition, and soil chemistry relative to root growth and functions Covers root morphology, root functions, nutrient and water uptake by roots, root-soil interactions, root-environment interactions, root-microbe interactions, physiology of root crops, and management practices to improve root growth Supports content with experimental results, and additional data is presented with pictures Increasing food production worldwide has become a major issue in the 21st century. Stagnation in grain yield of important food crops in recent years in developed, as well as developing, countries has contributed to a sharp increase in food prices. Furthermore, higher grain yield will be needed in the future to feed a burgeoning world population with a rising standard of living that requires more grain per capita. Technologies that enhance productivity, ensure environmental safety, and conserve natural resources are required to meet this challenge.

Photosynthesis of Leaf Canopies

Photosynthesis of Leaf Canopies
Author: Cornelis Teunis de Wit
Publisher:
Total Pages: 68
Release: 1965
Genre: Leaves
ISBN:

The development of a procedure to calculate the effect of certain environmental factors on the rate of photo-synthesis imposed mainly geometrical problems, which were solved in such a way that the actual calculation could be carried out by means of a computer. The calculation procedures have been used to study the. relative importance of the variables under various conditions. The results for a standard set of conditions, have been summarized in order to make it possible to estimate the daily photosynthesis at any time and place for a wide range of photosynthesis functions without a computer.