The 7th International Symposium on Plant Growth Modeling, Simulation, Visualization, and Application, PMA2022 organized by Jiangnan University and jointly organized by the University of Paris-Saclay, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Anhui Agricultural University was held in the form of an online conference from Oct 26 to 28, 2022. The Symposium was conducted in English and broadcast live globally through the four platforms: CNKI, VZan, KouShare, and Bilibili. Experts and scholars from more than ten countries including China, the United States, France, the Netherlands, and Australia participated in the symposium, which cutting-edge science & technology of plant models, including modeling theories from molecular to ecosystem scales, computational algorithms, simulation technologies and visualization methods, etc. was discussed and explored to promote agricultural intelligence and sustainable development in the interdisciplinary subjects such as life science, computer, Internet of things, automation, etc. Dr. Qian Tingting and Zhang Yingyu from the phenotype innovation team of the Information Research Institute, SAAS, attended the online symposium.

Dr. Qian gave a presentation on "3D digitized phenotyping assisted mapping quantitative trait loci for architecture traits in cucumber" at the symposium, which the application of 3D digital technology in the QTL mapping analysis of cucumber lateral branches, female flower rate, internode length, leaf size and other plant architecture traits were shared. The plant architecture of cucumber is an important collection of agronomic traits, and an important phenotypic trait that breeders should notice. However, due to the lack of high-throughput methods to measure and associate the related traits at present, the research of plant architecture traits and phenotypes had a large workload and inaccurate and incomplete data collection, said Dr. Qian. The intellectual property "Plant Skeleton Acquisition and 3D Visualization Software" of SAAS provided efficient and practical structural phenotyping tool for applications such as 3D reconstruction, plant appearance analysis, measurement of plant canopy morphological parameters, and group architecture design. By application of this technology, the LCR of important architecture traits such as lateral branches, female flowers, and internode length were successfully mapped, which provided an important theoretical basis and data support for the mining of cucumber plant appearance-related genes. In the Q&A part, Dr. Qian had a lively discussion with the participants on the features and the future improvement goals of the technology. The symposium is of great value to the international technical exchange of plant models and digital agriculture, and it is of great significance to develop the ideas of researchers in the field of digital agriculture of our academy.