Successive pattern in winter wheat main stem structure modeling

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With the rise of research on functional structural plant models (FSPMs), it is particularly important to realistically describe the structural traits of a plant. In 3D FSPMs, the true structural information of the canopy can make the model’s estimation of functional traits more accurate. Since canopy is the medium of the crop stands that sense and respond to the external environment, accurate estimation of detailed organ sizes in crop canopy is crucial, and current FSPMs still need to be improved. Here the structure of wheat ( Triticum aestivum ) was measured in detail at the phytomer level. Dataset was built which covers a set of ∼100 cultivars and 11 site-year under various field managements such as sowing density, inter-row, nitrogen fertilizer and sowing date. The relationships of successive phytomer sizes were quantified and the variance was analyzed for each independent experiment, only site was found as a significant impact factor. A conceptual model based on the successive pattern was proposed and validated for detailed final phytomer sizes. Then we coupled the meteorology data - the ratio of average daily gross radiation and temperature during the emergence and architecture mature with the model. The validation has taken place three times to emphasize model’s independent of cultivars, sites dependent and the ability of model parameters deriving from environmental factors, respectively. The results revealed the feasibility of the newly built wheat main stem structure model with the R ² higher than 0.85. Compared with ADEL-Wheat and Sirius Quality, the model achieved better performance in blade width and blade area estimation. According to the concise and easily acquired parameters of this model, it has potential for high throughput phenotyping detail wheat canopy structure. Previous work on the relationship between blade width and circumference of apex shoot in maize illustrated that the cell number was the most likely explanation for this pattern, which means the same work holds for similar crops.