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Modeling Plant Development with L-Systems

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Mathematical Modelling in Plant Biology

Abstract

Since their inception in 1968, L-systems have become a key conceptual, mathematical and software tool for modeling plant development at different levels of plant organization spanning molecular genetics, plant physiology, whole plant architecture and plant communities. The models can be descriptive, directly recapitulating observations and measurements of plants; mechanistic, explaining higher-level processes in terms of lower-level ones; or they may combine features of both classes. We present the basic idea of L-systems, motivate and outline some of their most useful extensions, and give a taste of current techniques for modeling with L-systems. The sample models progress in the scale of organization from a bacterium to a herbaceous plant to a tree, and simulate different forms of information transfer during the development, from communication between adjacent cells to bidirectional information exchange with the environment.

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Acknowledgements

We thank John Hall for the prototype version of the timeline editor featured in Fig. 8.10, Andrew Owens for help with Fig. 8.11, and Lynn Mercer for insightful discussions. The authors’ research on the L-system-based modeling methods, specific models, and the Virtual Laboratory (vlab) software used in the preparation of this paper was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and the Plant Phenotyping Imaging and Research Centre/Canada First Research Excellence Fund. This support is gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada

    Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz, Mikolaj Cieslak & Pascal Ferraro

  2. Centre for Horticultural Science, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

    Jim Hanan

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  1. Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz
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  2. Mikolaj Cieslak
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  3. Pascal Ferraro
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  4. Jim Hanan
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Correspondence to Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz .

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  1. Computational and Systems Biology, John Innes Centre, Norwich, Norfolk, UK

    Richard J. Morris

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Prusinkiewicz, P., Cieslak, M., Ferraro, P., Hanan, J. (2018). Modeling Plant Development with L-Systems. In: Morris, R. (eds) Mathematical Modelling in Plant Biology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99070-5_8

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