Crop Systems Biology: Narrowing the gaps between crop modelling and genetics

The sequencing of genomes has been completed for an increasing number of crop species, and researchers have now succeeded in isolating and characterising many important QTLs/genes. High expectations from genomics, however, are waving back toward the recognition that crop physiology is also important for realistic improvement of crop productivity. Complex processes and networks along various hierarchical levels of crop growth and development can be thoroughly understood with the help of their mathematical description – modelling. The further practical application of these understandings also requires quantitative predictions. In order to better support design, engineering and breeding for new crops and cultivars for improving agricultural production under global warming and climate change, there is an increasing call for an interdisciplinary research approach, which combines modern genetics and genomics, traditional physiology and biochemistry, and advanced bioinformatics and modelling. Such an interdisciplinary approach has been practised in various research groups for many years. However, it does not seem to be fully covered in the format of book publications. We want to initiate a book project on crop systems biology - narrowing the gaps between genotypes and phenotypes and the gaps between crop modelling and genetics/genomics, for publication in 2013/2014. The book will be meant for those scientists and graduate students from fundamental plant biology and applied crop science who are interested in bridging the gap between these two fields. We have invited a group of scientists (who have very good track records in publishing excellent papers in this field or in a closely related area) to contribute chapters to this new book, and they have agreed to do so.​

The Work is an interdisciplinary research approach, combining modern genetics and genomics, traditional physiology and biochemistry, and advanced bioinformatics and crop modelling. It is a rapidly developing field and this book is testimony to its dynamic evolution. It provides examples of how gene regulatory and metabolic networks are included, in a spatially and temporally specific manner, in multi-scale crop modelling and how functional-structural plant modelling in combination with quantitative trait loci analysis is used to advance breeding for architectural traits. It also illustrates how prediction accuracy can profit from the large data sets available on environmental and genotypic variables by integrating physiological and statistical knowledge, and how in silico profiling can be used to unravel genotype × environment × management interactions, to analyse trade-offs between different crop characteristics or to assess yield benefits of specific traits. The Work also demonstrates very contrasting crop types that crop ecophysiology and functional modelling can assist in linking organizational scales, closing the genotype-to-phenotype gap, designing ideotypes for specific environments, evaluating suitability of specific environments for certain genotypes, and supporting model-assisted molecular breeding.

This book will appeal to those interested in bridging fundamental plant biology and applied crop science using a diversity of systems modelling approaches.