Résumé
In the last twenty years, architectural studies in horticulture have led to a better understanding of fruit tree development and to improvements in tree and orchard management [7]. Tree architecture plays a key role in foliage distribution and consequently in light interception and carbon acquisition, which in turn strongly affect the reproductive growth of fruit trees. To integrate the acquired knowledge, we addressed the question of simulating the architecture of a developing tree over time. The objective of this project was to bring together the development of topology and geometry in a single simulation that characterises the architecture of an apple tree over time. As indicated previously [9, 3, 4], the simulation of shoot bending due to the weight of growing organs is particularly challenging because it is difficult to infer the mechanism of bending from direct measurements. To further the exploration of the bending dynamics in a developmental context, we have created an L-system simulation of a developing apple tree, called MAppleT (Markov Apple Tree), which is herein presented.