Computational Simulations to Improve Cereal Crops

Lodging, or the bending of the stems of grain crops, makes them hard to harvest and can reduce yield. Breeders of grain crops are interested in developing strains that have stems that are resistant to lodging.

Tarun Gangwar, a 2020 UMII MnDRIVE PhD Graduate Assistant, worked on a project called “Data-driven engineering analysis framework to enable breeding of lodging resistant cereals.” The overarching goal of the project was to develop data-driven engineering analysis and optimization methods to help plant geneticists breed crop varieties with optimal lodging resistance to support cereal producers of the Midwest.

Personally, Tarun Gangwar has deep regard for Norman Borlaug (Nobel Peace Prize, 1970; Padma Vibhushan, 2006), a University of Minnesota Alumnus, who was an instrumental figure behind the green revolution in the 1960s in developing economies such as Mexico and India. Borlaug developed semi-dwarfed lodging resistant wheat varieties that led to a major boost in wheat production and improved food security in these nations. Tarun grew up in the region that was a direct beneficiary of this work, and the opportunity to actively contribute in this direction simulated his interest in this project. He worked in the research group of former MSI PI Dominik Schillinger and is currently a post-doc in Professor Schillinger’s group at Technical University Darmstadt. He was awarded his PhD in 2021. More information about his research can be found on his website.

The project achieved two research goals:

  • Working with collaborators in the Department of Plant Genetics and Agronomy, the researchers built and validated a finite element simulation framework integrating the multiscale material modeling approach to predict the stem strength behavior of oat and wheat stems. These data-driven simulations immensely helped interpret the experimental results to inform lodging resistance and can design future experimental studies with extensively reduced labor and resource costs.
  • The researchers developed a material and structure optimization framework to gain insights into potential material and structure-related traits that improve the lodging resistance of cereal stems. These insights could offer input to breeding efforts to find more complex combinations of traits that are important for improving lodging resistance but have not been identified yet.

Dr. Gangwar used MSI resources for this project. The UMII MnDRIVE Graduate Assistantship program supports UMN PhD candidates pursuing research at the intersection of informatics and any of the five MnDRIVE areas:

  • Robotics, Sensors and Advanced Manufacturing
  • Global Food Ventures
  • Advancing Industry, Conserving Our Environment
  • Discoveries and Treatments for Brain Conditions
  • Cancer Clinical Trials

This project is part of the Global Food Ventures MnDRIVE area. Publications resulting from this work include:

  • T. Gangwar, D. Schillinger. Concurrent material and structure optimization of multiphase hierarchical systems within a continuum micromechanics framework. Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization, 64:1175-1197, 2021.
  • T. Gangwar, D.J. Heuschele, K.P. Smith, A. Fok, G. Annor, D. Schillinger. Multiscale characterization and micromechanical modeling of crop stem materials. Biomechanics and Modeling in Mechanobiology 20:69–91, 2021.
  • T. Gangwar, D. Schillinger. Thermodynamically consistent concurrent material and structure optimization of elastoplastic multiphase hierarchical systems. Submitted to: Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 2022. arXiv preprint: arXiv:2204.06839
  • T. Gangwar, A.Q. Susko, S. Baranova, M. Guala, K.P. Smith, D.J. Heuschele. Wheat and oat stem bending differences validated through multiscale analysis to inform lodging resistance. The Royal Society Open Science (submitted, 2022).
  • T. Gangwar. Computational multiscale analysis and optimization of multiphase hierarchical structures within a continuum micromechanics framework. PhD dissertation, University of Minnesota, 2021.

Seminar Presentations

  • Multiscale analysis and optimization for multiphase hierarchical systems within a continuum micromechanics framework. Geomechanics Seminar, University of Minnesota, USA, Spring 2021.

Research Computing partners:

  • University of Minnesota Informatics Institute
  • Minnesota Supercomputing Institute
graphical depiction of computer model of wheat stems