
Digital crops
Plants compete for resources such as light, nutrient and water. Plants also sense each other through all sorts of signals above and below ground, and respond to each other's presence by adapting their growth and development. Such plant-plant interactions are important determinants of crop productivity. Only if the plants that make up the crop play well together, resources can be used efficiently to produce biomass and yield.
We capture these interactions between plants, their growth and performance in 3D computer simulation models. We use these digital plants to test how plant interactions result in a certain crop performance, and how this could be influenced by changing plant traits, crop management, or altering the spatial pattern at which the plants are growing. Digital plants even allow to test plant traits or even entire plants that do not exist in reality yet. We use this knowledge to aid the development of better functioning crops that are efficient in the use of resources.