The architecture of OpenAlea: A visual programming and component based software for plant modeling

The FSPM community develops models to understand the biological processes involved in the function and growth of plants. Researchers in botany, ecophysiology, forestry, horticulture, applied mathematics and computer science have developed several models and software tools. Due to the different constraints and background of the teams, the available models have been developed in different programming languages on different operating systems with the goal of answering specific biological questions at a given scale. They are often developed as “monolithic” programs which generally lack of interoperability. In this work, we present the software architecture of OpenAlea, a flexible component-based framework designed to facilitate the integration and interoperability of heterogeneous models and techniques from different scientific disciplines. OpenAlea is developed in Python, a high-level, object-oriented, interpreted language. The OpenAlea architecture consists of: (a) a set of tools to integrate heterogeneous models implemented in various languages and on different platforms; (b) a component framework that allows for the dynamic management and composition of software components; and (c) a graphical modeling environment for enhancing the use of complex models and for rapid prototyping. To illustrate the integration of a complex component and its use through the graphical modeling environment, the PlantGL library for 3D plant modeling and visualization is presented.