From big data to mechanistic insights: decoding plant complexity with models

Recent advances in high-throughput sequencing, imaging, and phenotyping have carried plant science into the era of 'big data.' Complex, multi-scale datasets provide new opportunities to uncover plant molecular mechanisms with a level of detail previously unachievable. Fully exploiting this complexity requires integrating advanced statistics, computational modeling, and artificial intelligence (AI). This minireview offers guidance on how the combination of AI and mechanistic models is transforming temporal, image-based, and spatial omics data into detailed predictions of robust plant traits. In addition, embedding physical principles into AI models can enhance interpretability and strengthen their biological grounding, leading to more realistic representations of plant inner workings. Together, these advances are reshaping plant science by turning 'big data' into deep insights, thus greatly enriching our understanding of plant growth, adaptation, and environmental responses.