Functional–Structural Plant Model “GreenLab”: A State-of-the-Art Review

Abstract

It is crucial to assess the impact of climate change on crop productivity and sustainability for the development of effective adaptation measures. Crop models are essential for quantifying this impact on crop yields. To better express crops’ intrinsic growth and development patterns and their plasticity under different environmental conditions, the functional–structural plant model (FSPM) “GreenLab” has been developed. GreenLab is an organ-level model that can describe the intrinsic growth and development patterns of plants based on mathematical expressions without considering the influence of environmental factors, and then simulate the growth and development of plants in expressing plant plasticity under different environmental conditions. Moreover, the distinctive feature of GreenLab lies in its ability to compute model source–sink parameters affecting biomass production and allocation based on measured plant data. Over the past two decades, the GreenLab model has undergone continuous development, incorporating novel modeling methods and techniques, including the dual-scale automaton, substructure methods, the inverse of source–sink parameters, crown analysis, organic series, potential structure, and parameter optimization techniques. This paper reviews the development history, the basic concepts, main theories, characteristics, and applications of the GreenLab model. Additionally, we introduce the software tools that implement the GreenLab model. Last, we discuss the perspectives and directions for the GreenLab model’s future development.