Course Presentation

Matrix calculus is a branch of mathematics that studies the various operations and manipulations of matrices and their applications. A matrix is somewhat an extension of the notion of a vector and allows for the study of multidimensional cases of a linear nature.There are numerous applications of matrix calculus in the fields of computer science (particularly in artificial intelligence), engineering, physics, and economics. In the field of agronomy, which concerns you, matrices are widely used to represent and analyze various types of data, such as soil analysis (matrix representation of the physicochemical characteristics of soils: nutrient content, soil texture, soil pH, etc.), agronomic experiments to study the effects of different treatments on crops, plant genetics (genotype matrices to study genetic diversity and phylogenetic relationships among species), crop planning (crop plan matrices to plan crop rotations and optimize the use of available resources), multivariate data analysis (PCA: Principal Component Analysis, MCA: Multiple Correspondence Analysis), and modeling of agricultural systems (simulation models using matrices to represent the flow of matter and energy through the different components of the system, such as crops, soil, water, nutrients, etc.). All of this is to simulate the functioning of a system and evaluate the impact of different agricultural practices.