A Visualization System for Tomato Plant Modeling

Virtual crop models make great significances to the research of quantification of field evapotranspiration, design of plant type, and optimization of cultural practices. Because most existing plant-modeling systems require the user to have specific biological knowledge about plants, thus it is often a hard and laborious task by using these systems to create a three-dimensional plant model. Moreover, there is lack of software tools to specially simulate the structures and growth process of a certain kind of crop. With regard to those statuses of virtual plant modeling, in this article a powerful and convenient tomato plant modeling system is developed with the integrated platform of Visual C++ 6.0 and OpenGL. Based on the growth laws and the topological structure's character of tomato plant, Parametric L-system is used to simulate the topological structures of tomato plant. The technique of parametric triangular meshes is used to model different organs of tomato, and the surface-rendering techniques in Computer Graphics are used to render the created shapes of tomato plant at both organ and individual levels. Based on the accumulated temperature model, the system can predict the growth status of tomato plant, and give some suggestion of tomato planting.