What is plant phenotyping?
Plant Phenotyping is the measurement of plant phenomes – the physical and biochemical traits of plants – and how they change in response to their genetic make-up, their growing environment and the way they are grown.
Phenotype = Genotype × Environment × Management
Understanding this is critical for
- Breeding climate-resilient, higher-yielding, pest-resistant crops
- Informing sustainable agricultural practices
- Creating high-value plant-based medicines, food and materials
Phenotyping history
The concept of plant phenomics is ancient. For millennia, farmers have observed their crops and over the centuries, researchers have gathered ever more precise data.
More recently, exciting technological advances have enabled huge progress in speed, accuracy and versatility.
Today, we use sophisticated sensors, cameras, robotics and data analytics to measure the phenotype and the environment, in order to identify the best genotypes and management practices.
Plant phenotyping infrastructures
Advanced plant phenotyping infrastructure provides sophisticated growth facilities that enable specific environmental influences to be isolated, simulated and studied.
Such infrastructure also provides high-throughput digital technologies that objectively measure and analyze a wide variety of phenotypic markers quickly, objectively and non-destructively.
With the right equipment and know-how this can be done at scales from the level of individual plant organs to cropped landscapes.
Watch our video to learn more
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Empowering European plant science with cutting-edge phenotyping infrastructure.