Appearance and formation of seed and pericarp may be explained by a reaction–diffusion mechanism? A mathematical modeling

This paper proposes a phenomenological model describing plant seed cortex (testa) and pericarp pattern formation by reaction–diffusion equations with Turing space parameters. Numerical examples for the seed’s simplified geometries in order to study pattern formation were done. The finite element method in conjunction with the Newton–Raphson method was used for the numerical solution to approximate nonlinear partial differential equations. Numerical examples showed that the model can represent the formation of different types of seed cortex and pericarp.