Modelling for Prediction of Horticultural Plant Growth and Defense

Dear Colleagues,

The horticulture industry focuses on providing high-quality products, free of disorders, to consumers while achieving optimum profit for the suppliers and minimum waste. For this purpose, plant growth and defence mechanisms have been of particular interest in the scientific domain; models describing the dynamics of plant growth provide a vision for optimising practices across the supply chain and mitigating disorder risks and disease outbreaks. Furthermore, advances in data collection and monitoring technologies, as well as increased computational capabilities, are making complex models feasible that integrate biological mechanisms of plants with environmental factors and human-led activities in the context of smart horticulture and digital twins of horticultural systems.

This Special Issue of Plants will focus on comprehensive models to describe or predict plant growth and defence, in addition to prescriptive approaches to modelling to optimize outcomes. The articles will consider advances in several aspects of growth, from identifying factors in development or defence mechanisms in biological models within the plant to the study of the dynamics and interactions between plants and environmental factors, including soil or weather conditions, for example. These modelling approaches will cover the spectrum from biological or physiological systems to phenomenological or empirical data-centric methods such as machine learning or artificial intelligence.

Dr. Maryam Alavi-Shoshtari
Guest Editor

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