Abstract:
FOREWORD
The Sixth International Symposium on Modelling Fruit Research and Orchard Management was held at the University of California, Davis in Davis, California (USA) from 15 to 18 July 2001 under the auspices of the ISHS (International Society for Horticultural Science). It was organized by members of the Working Group on Computer Modelling in Fruit Research and Orchard Management of ISHS. The meeting opened with a very dynamic plenary talk by Dr.
Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Calgary (Calgary, Alberta, Canada). Dr.
Prusinkiewicz’s talk on “Virtual plants, the art and science of plant modeling” provided a new vision for the group regarding future possibilities of using L-systems for developing plant simulation models that are not only mechanistically complex but graphically explicit and visually pleasing.
Because the content of his plenary talk has been published in numerous other venues, his talk was not included in the proceedings to this meeting.
Dr.
Prusinkiewicz also led an informal workshop on the principles and mechanics of using L-systems for modeling plants for all participants who wanted to attend.
Readers are encouraged to view his work at his website at http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~pwp/ if they would like to review his graphics modeling work.
Modelling helps in the development of integrated understanding of dynamic processes underlying fruit production, identification of gaps in knowledge about how fruit trees respond to genetic environmental and management inputs and elucidation of the consequences of management choices for fruit crop productivity and quality.
The meeting was organized around these general themes and after the plenary session contributed papers were presented on the following general topics: Crop modelling and carbon partitioning, Modelling photosynthesis, light interception and water use, Modelling fruit growth and quality, Models for pest control decision support, and Models for cultural practices decision support.
There was a good distribution of contributed papers within each of these topic areas and ample time for discussion of each contribution as well as general discussions of current progress and need for future work in each area.
Discussions were lively with broad participation by most who attended the meeting.
There was generally good participation by all who attended the symposium and renewed enthusiasm for the future of the working group and the use of computer models as tools for understanding, and managing fruit production systems and educating others about the processes involved.
The group is looking forward to the convening of the seventh fruit modelling symposium in Denmark in 2004 under the leadership of Dr.
Peter Braun (pbr@kvl.dk).
The working group maintains a website to sign up for the work group mailing list go to the ISHS website: http://www.ishs.org/sci/sci2.htm and choose F10 Modelling Work Group.
Theodore M. DeJong
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The international scientific advisory committee for the workgroup made valuable contributions to the organization of the symposium and those present at the meeting served as session moderators.
The efforts of members of the scientific review committee E. Costes, E.E. Goldschmidt, Y. Grossman, R. Habib and A.N. Lakso are particularly appreciated and were essential to get this volume published.
The organizational skills and help of Ms.
T.A. Brown and the staff at UC Davis Conference and Events Services and Ms.
Kristy Geer and Mr.
Sean Versoza in the Department of Pomology at UC Davis are greatly appreciated for coordinating the registration and logistics of the meeting.
I am especially grateful to Ms.
Kristy Geer for her dedicated service and computer skills in organizing, reformatting, editing, and correcting all of the abstracts and contributed papers for this symposium.
The sponsorship of this symposium by the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and the Department of Pomology is also appreciated.
PREFACE
This volume of Acta Horticulturae is the Proceedings of the 6th International Symposium on Computer Modelling in Fruit Research and Orchard Management.
Invited and keynote speakers and selected authors of offered oral papers and posters had the opportunity to submit their manuscripts for publication in this volume of the series Acta Horticulturae.
Submitted manuscripts were reviewed by the Editor and the Editorial Board amended according to the referee suggestions prior to acceptance.
The ISHS acknowledges the cooperation received from the Editor and the Editorial Board on reviewing the manuscripts which was a significant contribution to the overall quality of the publication.
The ISHS Board of Directors
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