Comparison between empirical or functional sinks of organs - Application on Tomato plant

Baogui Zhang (1) , Meng Zhen Kang (2) , Véronique Letort (3, 4) , Xiujuan Wang (1, 3) , P. de Reffye (4, 5)

1 PSI - Key Laboratory of Plant-Soil Interactions - College of Resources and Environmental Sciences
2 LIAMA - Eco-informatics
3 MAS - Mathématiques Appliquées aux Systèmes - EA 4037
4 DIGIPLANTE - Modélisation de la croissance et de l'architecture des plantes
5 UMR AMAP - Botanique et Modélisation de l'Architecture des Plantes et des Végétations

Biomass partitioning among organs depends on their sink strengths, i.e. their capacity to attract assimilates. Using a descriptive approach, where plant development is driven by thermal time, and empirical laws fitted from experimental data, it is possible to trace back by inverse method the dynamics of biomass partitioning among organs. However, the descriptive sink function suffers from the drawbacks that organ development and biomass accumulation are not interactively related. Moreover, many parameters are required and are difficult to be measured accurately. In this paper an alternative organ sink strength definition is proposed, in which the organ sink size is related to the maximum organ biomass, which in turn depends on its primordium size. The sink strength increases proportionally to its size at the early growth stage and decreases by dampening when its mass approaches the final mass. Comparisons to the standard empirical sink function used in the GreenLab model were conducted on tomato plants. The new functional sinks are more biologically relevant and simulated rather adequately the organ biomass evolution. Further improvement is ongoing to increase simulation accuracy.

Mots clés: source-sink; empirical sinks; demand; functional-structural model; plant growth

Domaines: Biologie végétale; Systèmes dynamiques [math.DS]

Baogui Zhang, Meng Zhen Kang, Véronique Letort, Xiujuan Wang, P. de Reffye. Comparison between empirical or functional sinks of organs - Application on Tomato plant. 2009 Plant Growth Modeling And Applications, Nov 2009, Beijing, China. pp.191-197. ⟨hal-00546803⟩