A new method for the reconstruction of unknown non-monotonic growth functions in the chemostat

We propose an adaptive control law that allows one to identify unstable steady states of the open-loop system in the single-species chemostat model without the knowledge of the growth function. We then show how to use a continuation method to reconstruct the whole graph of the growth function. Two variants, in continuous and discrete time, are presented. The case of two species in competition is also examined.