  The present study is aimed at analysing the benefits of an ontological
approach in Functional Structural Plant Modelling. The ontological approach has
been used at two levels, to refine the conceptual modelling approach, and to
define the nomenclature of the plant. To the scope available domain-specific
ontologies describing plant entities and their relations have been analysed to
verify how they support botanical and phenological descriptions at different
scales. The analysis put in evidence how ontologies have a large number of
shared terms and also host a large number of structural and dynamical relations
among entities, however, they still lack semantic annotation useful for a
complete and consistent Conceptual Modelling, as put in evidence by Foundation
Ontologies. Nonetheless, the analysis also put in evidence the potential of the
approach and the basis for designing a bridged ontology to be used to produce
tools for learning botany, growing techniques, and supporting precision
Agriculture.
