Section: Software

Alinea

Participants : Christophe Pradal [ coordinator ] , Christian Fournier.

The aim of this Action Ciblée Incitative of INRA is to constitute a consortium of modelers from INRA around the OpenAlea platform, and to integrate various ecophysiological models of simulation in OpenAlea (radiative transfer, interaction between plant and pest, circulation of hydric fluxes, and dispersion). The project includes 3 INRA teams and the INRIA Virtual Plants project.

In 2009, several research group from INRA and CIRAD have worked together on reconstruction and simulation of plant development for different species of gramineous such as rice, wheat, or maïze. Different components have been integrated into the OpenAlea platforms:

• Alinea.Adel is a module to simulate the 3D architectural development of gramineous crops.

• Alinea.Caribu is a modelling suite for lighting 3D virtual scenes, especially designed for the illumination of virtual plant canopies such as virtual crop fields. It uses a special algorithm, the nested radiosity, that allows for a precise estimation of light absorption at the level of small canopy elements.

• Alinea.TopVine is a component to reconstruct grapevine canopy structure.