OpenAlea.HydroRoot: a modelling framework to dissect, predict and phenotype branched root hydraulic architecture
Abstract
Drought is a significant factor in agricultural losses, making it imperative to understand how root system architecture and function (RSA) adapts to environmental conditions such as water deficit. HydroRoot is a functional-structural plant model (FSPM) aimed at analysing and simulating root system hydraulic and solute transport. The model provides a static hydraulic solver, a coupled water-solute transport solver, a statistical generator of RSA based on the Markov model, and a dynamic hydraulic model accounting for root growth. This paper presents the model, mathematical description of solver formalisms, and use cases with their associated tutorials. Four use cases illustrate the capabilities of HydroRoot, which has been successfully used for phenotyping root hydraulics across various species including Arabidopsis, maize, and pearl millet. The model-driven phenotyping method ‘Cut and Flow’ is presented to characterize root axial and radial conductivities on a given genotype. Finally, three step-by-step tutorials provide a structured way to learn how to use HydroRoot (i) to simulate hydraulics of a given root architecture, (ii) to simulate water and solute transport in a maize root, and (iii) to simulate hydraulics on two pearl millet genotypes in varying soil conditions. HydroRoot is an open-source package of the OpenAlea platform, with the code publicly available on GitHub. A comprehensive documentation is available with a reproducible gallery of examples.
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BibTeX
@article{bauget2026openaleahydroroot,
title = {{OpenAlea.HydroRoot: a modelling framework to dissect, predict and phenotype branched root hydraulic architecture}},
author = {Fabrice Bauget and Adama Ndour and Yann Boursiac and Christophe Maurel and Laurent Laplaze and Mikael Lucas and Christophe Pradal},
journal = {in silico Plants},
year = {2026},
month = jul,
doi = {10.1093/insilicoplants/diag025},
url = {https://inria.hal.science/hal-05837842v1},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - OpenAlea.HydroRoot: a modelling framework to dissect, predict and phenotype branched root hydraulic architecture
AU - Fabrice Bauget
AU - Adama Ndour
AU - Yann Boursiac
AU - Christophe Maurel
AU - Laurent Laplaze
AU - Mikael Lucas
AU - Christophe Pradal
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/07/01
JO - in silico Plants
DO - 10.1093/insilicoplants/diag025
UR - https://inria.hal.science/hal-05837842v1
AB - Drought is a significant factor in agricultural losses, making it imperative to understand how root system architecture and function (RSA) adapts to environmental conditions such as water deficit. HydroRoot is a functional-structural plant model (FSPM) aimed at analysing and simulating root system hydraulic and solute transport. The model provides a static hydraulic solver, a coupled water-solute transport solver, a statistical generator of RSA based on the Markov model, and a dynamic hydraulic model accounting for root growth. This paper presents the model, mathematical description of solver formalisms, and use cases with their associated tutorials. Four use cases illustrate the capabilities of HydroRoot, which has been successfully used for phenotyping root hydraulics across various species including Arabidopsis, maize, and pearl millet. The model-driven phenotyping method ‘Cut and Flow’ is presented to characterize root axial and radial conductivities on a given genotype. Finally, three step-by-step tutorials provide a structured way to learn how to use HydroRoot (i) to simulate hydraulics of a given root architecture, (ii) to simulate water and solute transport in a maize root, and (iii) to simulate hydraulics on two pearl millet genotypes in varying soil conditions. HydroRoot is an open-source package of the OpenAlea platform, with the code publicly available on GitHub. A comprehensive documentation is available with a reproducible gallery of examples.
SN - 2517-5025
ER -