AMAPstudio: An editing and simulation software suite for plants architecture modelling

AMAPstudio is a software suite dedicated to plants architecture modelling, designed for botanists and agronomists, providing features to edit, visualise, explore and simulate multi-scale plant descriptions.AMAPstudio is based on the multi-scale tree graph (MTG) data structure, which is commonly used to represent plant topology. The user can explore and edit the topology and the geometry of one or several plants. Specific data can be extracted with combinations of criteria and can be visualised in tables and graphs. Simple analysis functions can be run and data can be exported to external tools, e.g. R or any other statistical computing environment, for more specific analyses.AMAPstudio is also a framework in which modellers can integrate their own plant simulation models to build plant growth or scene dynamics scenarios and explore the results.Models can be of different kinds, they can address more or less functioning and interaction with other plants or with the environment, possibly enabling to run ecological studies.AMAPstudio is an open software built according to the Capsis methodology. It is scenario oriented and brings particularly interactive editors easing the daily work and knowledge transfer. It is a free open-source software (LGPL) available on all Java compatible operating systems and it can be downloaded on http://amapstudio.cirad.fr.