Plant Modeling with CPlantBox: Bridging Structure and Function

Plant development strongly depends on the water and nutrient uptake by the evolving root system, the carbon uptake and assimilation in the leaves, as well as the water, solute and carbon transport inside the plant. The mechanistic functional-structural plant model CPlantBox enables simulations of the dynamic plant and soil systems, and therefore the analysis of feedback loops between water and carbon fluxes as well as root-soil interface processes such as water and solute uptake or rhizodeposition. Such models are a crucial tool to evaluate the sustainability of future phenotype-environment-management combinations, as well as to enhance plant breeding efforts and to analyze the impact of future climate scenarios. Therefore, CPlantBox serves as a powerful platform for advancing sustainable agricultural management strategies .

The open-source model CPlantBox has been developed over the last fifteen years starting from a pure structural root model (Leitner et al. 2010) developing to a functional-structural root architecture model (Schnepf et al. 2018), towards a more holistic functional structural plant model (Giraud et al. 2023, Zhou et al. 2020). Today, CPlantBox includes multiple functional modules describing water and carbon fluxes within the plant, including a photosynthesis model, as well as various dynamic rhizosphere modules that are described by 1D axisymmetric systems of partial differential equations (PDE) around root segment that interact with 1D, 2D or 3D macroscopic soil models. The PDEs are solved with the open-source finite volume solver DuMux (Koch et al. 2021). In this work we describe CPlantBox by state-of-the art examples from various research projects specifically focusing on its functional modules, and presenting its modelling framework which facilitates further model development. 

References

Giraud M., Gall S.L., Harings M., Javaux M., Leitner D., Meunier F., Rothfuss Y., van Dusschoten D., Vanderborght J., Vereecken H., Lobet G., and Schnepf A. (2023). CPlantBox: a fully coupled modelling platform for the water and carbon fluxes in the soil–plant–atmosphere continuum. in silico Plants 5 (2), diad009

Koch T., Gläser D., Weishaupt K., Ackermann S., Beck M., Becker B., ... & Flemisch B. (2021). DuMux 3–an open-source simulator for solving flow and transport problems in porous media with a focus on model coupling. Computers & Mathematics with Applications, 81, 423-443.

Leitner D., Klepsch S., Bodner G, and Schnepf A. (2010). A dynamic root system growth model based on L-Systems: Tropisms and coupling to nutrient uptake from soil. Plant and soil 332: 177-192.

Schnepf A., Leitner D., Landl M., Lobet G., Mai T.H., Morandage S., Sheng C., Zörner M., Vanderborght J., Vereecken H. (2018). CRootBox: a structural–functional modelling framework for root systems. Annals of botany 121 (5), 1033-1053.

Zhou X.R., Schnepf A., Vanderborght J., Leitner D., Lacointe A., Vereecken H., and Lobet G. (2020) CPlantBox, a whole-plant modelling framework for the simulation of water-and carbon-related processes. in silico Plants 2 (1), diaa001.