Abstract:

Visual simulation on crop architecture can help readers to better understand crop growth processes and analyze the relationship between architecture and function. Panicle of rice is the critical organ for yield formation. Its architecture depends deeply on ecological environment and cultivation methods, and most crop growth models on rice can simulate the effect of ecological environment and cultivation methods on yield components, such as panicle number, grain number per panicle, seed-setting percentage, 1000-grain weight, and number of primary branch. Therefore combination with the outputs of crop growth model, developing architecture model will improve its applicability. On the field experiments with different cultivars and nitrogen applications, we analyzed the quantitative characteristics of panicle architecture. The results were as follows: The ratio of primary branch to panicle in length could be characterized by a quadratic equation expressed in terms of nodal number of branch on panicle axis; and these was a linear relationship between the number of secondary branch and the length of primary branch; the primary branch grew uniformly on panicle axis and the nodal distances of primary and secondary branch also had no significant difference. Furthermore, based on the stability of spikelet number of primary branch and secondary branch, the outputs of growth model, such as grain number per panicle and the number of primary branch, were used to analyze total number of secondary branch per panicle and its space distribution. Thus panicle architecture could be described clearly. Then the model of total number of secondary branch per panicle and panicle architecture were validated with independent data. The results indicate that the simulated values of total number of secondary branch per panicle are accordant with the observed values, and the simulated panicle architectures are similar with the observed. Panicle architecture can be simulated visually under different conditions.

Key words: Rice, Panicle, Architecture, Virtual