Variability of pea morphogenesis. An exploratory study based on six pea genotypes with contrasting architectures

Pea is the main legume species grown in European agricultural systems although its productivity is limited due to foliar diseases or lodging. Architectural plant models therefore appeared to be suitable tools for studying the behaviour of contrasting pea architecture against environmental factors. We characterized the growth of six contrasting pea genotypes in order to analyse their developmental rules that are needed to build up such functional-structural models. Virtual plant models were reconstructed from digitization of the pea cultivars along their growing cycle, resulting in a database of 950 mock-ups. Pea cultivars exhibited contrasting architectures in terms of green area, plant height and growth rates. Three categories of growth habits were identified among the experimented cultivars which were distinguished according to their earliness, leaf type and axis development. The present study highlights the strong genotypic variability of pea architecture and also provides a quantitative description of pea morphogenesis that can be used to build functional-structural models. Moreover, these contrasting architectures also allowed us to assess the behaviour of different pea cultivar towards environmental factors.