JuRSE Code of the Month - July 2026

Each month we highlight a code from Forschungszentrum Jülich and this month's code is CPlantBox, co-developed at the Institute of Bio- and Geosciences, Agrosphere (IBG-3).

CPlantBox
CPlantBox is a functional-structural plant-soil modelling framework. It simulates the 3D architecture of a plant, coupled carbon and water flow within the plant, water flow and solute transport in a 3D dynamic soil, as well as water and nutrient uptake, and rhizodeposition.

JuRSE selected highlights
From plants to research software and back? Absolutely! The work of this team shows how research software is sometimes tied to very tangible, everyday things. The usual problem arising from this: How do you make your software tangible and usable, then? This team created a full-fledged web app for this purpose, making the results of plant-soil modelling and simulation visible, usable, tangible for everyone. They also do many other things right and well (extensive installation guides, articles citing the software, you name it), but proper research software engineering always keeps the target audience in mind, too.

More information
Website: https://cplantbox.fz-juelich.de/
RSD: https://helmholtz.software/software/cplantbox
GitHub: https://github.com/Plant-Root-Soil-Interactions-Modelling/CPlantBox