Abstract:Accurate 3D plant models are crucial for computational phenotyping and physics-based simulation; however, current approaches face significant limitations. Learning-based reconstruction methods require extensive species-specific training data and lack editability. Procedural modeling offers parametric control but demands specialized expertise in geometric modeling and an in-depth understanding of complex procedural rules, making it inaccessible to domain scientists. We present FloraForge, an LLM-assisted framework that enables domain experts to generate biologically accurate, fully parametric 3D plant models through iterative natural language Plant Refinements (PR), minimizing programming expertise. Our framework leverages LLM-enabled co-design to refine Python scripts that generate parameterized plant geometries as hierarchical B-spline surface representations with botanical constraints with explicit control points and parametric deformation functions. This representation can be easily tessellated into polygonal meshes with arbitrary precision, ensuring compatibility with functional structural plant analysis workflows such as light simulation, computational fluid dynamics, and finite element analysis. We demonstrate the framework on maize, soybean, and mung bean, fitting procedural models to empirical point cloud data through manual refinement of the Plant Descriptor (PD), human-readable files. The pipeline generates dual outputs: triangular meshes for visualization and triangular meshes with additional parametric metadata for quantitative analysis. This approach uniquely combines LLM-assisted template creation, mathematically continuous representations enabling both phenotyping and rendering, and direct parametric control through PD. The framework democratizes sophisticated geometric modeling for plant science while maintaining mathematical rigor.




Abstract:The application of artificial intelligence (AI) in three-dimensional (3D) agricultural research, particularly for maize, has been limited by the scarcity of large-scale, diverse datasets. While 2D image datasets are abundant, they fail to capture essential structural details such as leaf architecture, plant volume, and spatial arrangements that 3D data provide. To address this limitation, we present AgriField3D (https://baskargroup.github.io/AgriField3D/), a curated dataset of 3D point clouds of field-grown maize plants from a diverse genetic panel, designed to be AI-ready for advancing agricultural research. Our dataset comprises over 1,000 high-quality point clouds collected using a Terrestrial Laser Scanner, complemented by procedural models that provide structured, parametric representations of maize plants. These procedural models, generated using Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines (NURBS) and optimized via a two-step process combining Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and differentiable programming, enable precise, scalable reconstructions of leaf surfaces and plant architectures. To enhance usability, we performed graph-based segmentation to isolate individual leaves and stalks, ensuring consistent labeling across all samples. We also conducted rigorous manual quality control on all datasets, correcting errors in segmentation, ensuring accurate leaf ordering, and validating metadata annotations. The dataset further includes metadata detailing plant morphology and quality, alongside multi-resolution subsampled versions (100k, 50k, 10k points) optimized for various computational needs. By integrating point cloud data of field grown plants with high-fidelity procedural models and ensuring meticulous manual validation, AgriField3D provides a comprehensive foundation for AI-driven phenotyping, plant structural analysis, and 3D applications in agricultural research.