Abstract
Fluctuating asymmetry in plant leaves is a widely used measure in geometric morphometrics for assessing random deviations from perfect symmetry. In this study, we considered the concept of fluctuating asymmetry to improve the prototype leaf shape of the functional-structural plant model L-Cucumber. The overall objective was to provide a realistic geometric representation of the leaves for the light sensitive plant reactions in the virtual plant model. Based on three-dimensional data from several hundred in situ digitized cucumber leaves comparisons of model leaves and measurements were conducted. Robust Bayesian comparison of groups was used to assess statistical differences between leaf halves while respecting fluctuating asymmetries. Results indicated almost no directional asymmetry in leaves comparing different distances from the prototype while detecting systematic deviations shared by both halves. This information was successfully included in an improved leaf prototype and implemented in the virtual plant model L-Cucumber. Comparative virtual plant simulations revealed a slight improvement in plant internode development against experimental data using the novel leaf shape. Further studies can now focus on analyses of stress on the 3D-deformation of the leaf and the development of a dynamic leaf shape model.
Highlights
The field of plant modeling provides insights to plant responses on changes in environmental parameters where experimental evaluation becomes infeasible
In relation to the leaf base point—the fixed reference point, which represents the connection between leaf and petiole—we identified the tip to be approx. 29 % (s x = 0.29w) further apart from the base in the original prototype leaf
We found significant effects on growth parameters related to canopy light interaction using a more realistic leaf shape model in the virtual plant model L-Cucumber
Summary
The field of plant modeling provides insights to plant responses on changes in environmental parameters where experimental evaluation becomes infeasible. Simulation studies can include effects related to climate change, such as the increase in temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentration, or focus on changes in controlled greenhouse conditions. While in the past two kinds of plant modeling approaches—architectural models and process-based models—were analyzed separately, they were combined to functional-structural plant models (FSPM, aka virtual plant models) more recently [1,2,3]. Using process-based models, whole-plant reactions on environmental conditions are studied, while architectural models focus on establishing algorithms to simulate plant morphological development often described by Lindenmayer-Systems (L-Systems) [4]. FSPMs allow studying both, the physiological and structural responses to global and local environmental conditions. Most prominent environmental factors include temperature, nutrient supply and light, e.g., photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) [1,2,5,6,7]
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