Space invaders: virtual plants in the smart state

Media are invited to attend an open day on Friday, 12 April, between 9:00am and 3.00pm at the Centre for Plant Architecture Informatics (CPAI), University of Queensland St Lucia Campus, Building 69, Level 8.

Plants will do anything to occupy space - even poison, strangle, and suck the life out of their neighbours. Mostly, grabbing the lion`s share of the light, water, and nutrients is enough to win the battle with competitors.

The reason for this violent behaviour is that if a plant does not occupy a large volume of space, it cannot collect enough resources to survive. The shape or "architecture" of plants is important because it affects how well our food, fibre, and timber crops collect resources and grow.

Research into how plants build their diverse shapes is the focus of the Centre for Plant Architecture Informatics (CPAI) at the University of Queensland.

"On show will be the latest laser and computer technologies used to measure and simulate the structural development of plants", says Prof Peter Room, Director of the Centre.

"The simulations create three-dimensional (3D) `virtual plants` that grow inside computers."

"The approach is very similar to the ways engineers and architects design and test cars, planes, and buildings using computers. Virtual plants can be created and viewed on standard PCs as well as on powerful virtual reality systems such as the one recently opened at the University of Queensland`s Visualization and Advanced Computation Laboratory", he says.

Collecting and processing information on plant structure is pushing the boundaries of several branches of mathematics and computer science. Because of this, the CPAI has brought together expert mathematicians and IT specialists as well as biologists to form a multi-disciplinary team.

The CPAI was established in July 2000 as a joint activity of The University of Queensland and CSIRO.

For further information, contact Dr Peter Room, Director, CPAI (telephone 07 3365 6131, email: Peter.Room@cpai.uq.edu.au), Jan King, UQ Communications (telephone 07 3365 1120, email: j.king@mailbox.uq.edu.au) or visit the CPAI website: http://www.cpai.uq.edu.au/