Séminaire IBIP
Les séminaires ont lieu sur le Campus Montpellier SupAgro/INRA de La Gaillarde (2, place P. Viala Montpellier)

Jeudi 5 novembre 2026 à 14h, Amphi 206

The Ariadne Framework: characterizing root system architecture plasticity through multicriteriaoptimization

Root system architecture (RSA) — the shape and spatial arrangement of a plant’s roots— adapts to environmental conditions in order for the plant to effectively acquire water and nutrients. Quantifying this plasticity is challenging, because RSA is not a single trait but the integrated outcome of many traits involving several developmental decisions. In order to address this challenge, we use a functional-structural model of the root system from the perspective of a transport network. Every transport network faces a fundamental trade-off: minimizing the cost of building infracstrutures (material cost) competes with minimizing the total distance that resources must travel (transport cost). In this talk I will present the Αriadne framework which, built around this idea, generates a spectrum of RSAs that optimally balance these two competing costs while respecting biological constraints. This allows the assignment of an optimization level and trade off direction to any real root system, which provides an integrative method to characterize RSA plasticity.

Contact : Matthieu Platre