A Plug-In Framework for Modeling Plant Growth

Modeling plant growth is a hot topic in computer graphics and agronomic communities, with the goal to understand the biological processes involved in the function and growth of plants. Several models and software tools have been developed by researchers from different areas for this aim, but due to the different goals and background of the research teams, these models have been developed in different programming languages at a given scale. Lack of interoperability and reusability are two common problems among these models. In this paper, we present a flexible plug-in based software framework designed to facilitate the integration, reusability and interoperability of heterogeneous models and techniques from different research teams in plant modeling communities. This framework consists of: (a) a plug-in based framework that allows for the dynamic management and composition of software plug-ins; (b) a complete set of 3D-geometric components for modeling and visualization, includes primitives like spheres, cones and boxes, height fields, lights and spline/NURBS surfaces; and (c) a graphical designing environment for enhancing the use of plant models and for rapid prototyping. The experimental examples will demonstrate that the proposed framework is useful for plant growth simulation.