Résumé
AMAPsim is an interactive tool dedicated to the simulation of plant morphogenesis and allows the user to produce accurate botanical shapes. This software is the result of more than a decade of development and research devoted to plant architecture and growth. The AMAPsim kernel is composed mainly of modules devoted to: 1- management of the topological structure via specific data structure; 2- the management of bud growth processes via a time scheduler. The simulation of plant topology is based on the growth of a set of buds, whose activity, i.e. apical growth and branching, is modeled using stochastic processes. The geometry of resulting axes, e.g. branching angle, phyllotaxy, bending, organ shape and size, is modeled through simple descriptive functions. Throughout their life, the potential growth of each bud is represented through a numerical value called physiological age, which controls each other parameter value. This advanced botanical concept allows classification of components within the plant, i.e. the main stem, short axes, long axes, leaves and flowers, as well as allowing the time differentiation within each class to be taken into consideration . The set of values of physiological ages is called the reference axis. The evolutionary rules of the physiological age along this reference axis are represented through an oriented automaton. A specific software interface has been implemented in AMAPsim which allows interactions with dynamically loaded additional functions. This interface gives access to both topological and geometrical parameters before use by the AMAPsim kernel. Additional functions can also be run at any time during simulations, according to user-inserted events that are handled by the scheduler. These communication procedures can be used to test alternative growth models or functions, e.g. branching models, photosynthesis and/or allocation rules, thus bypassing or modifying the default AMAPsim routines’ behaviour. This opening to external functions also offers a larger field of applications, such as allowing feedback between plant growth and the physical environment to be performed. This interaction will be shown through several simulation examples.