Italy

The Italian Phenotyping community has participated in the establishment of EMPHASIS since 2017 through the preparation phase EMPHASIS-PREP. Italy has actively contributed to the development of the European infrastructure on plant phenotyping, especially providing help with stakeholder engagement, communication and training. Italy strongly recognizes the value of EMPHASIS to access to a network of potential collaborators and expertise for research proposals and projects, engagement in development of common experimental and data standards, and fostering knowledge and technology transfer. For these reasons, Italy will join as Member to the European Research Infrastructure Consortium EMPHASIS ERIC 

The Italian plant phenotyping community, PHEN-ITALY, is composed of 11 Universities, 5 Research Institutions, 1 International Organisation and 1 Contract Research Organisation. As a JRU, PHEN-ITALY has its own governance which comprehends the General Assembly of members, the Coordinator, the Executive Board and the President. Its structure and functioning is based on a collaboration agreement. 

The installations part of the JRU are distributed along the national territory. PHEN-ITALY is inserted in the Italian National Research Infrastructure Roadmap (PNIR 2021-2027) as high priority research infrastructure and as such, annually receives funds from the Ministry of University and Research to undertake its activities. These range from proving access to the infrastructures to contributing to infrastructural upgrades and to training and transfer of knowledge. Additional support comes from  

PHEN-ITALY participation in several EU projects, mostly dealing with the provision of infrastructural services. 

From a scientific point of view, aside traditional plant phenotyping based on the use of optical sensors in controlled and field conditions,  PHEN-ITALY core facilities also allow phenotyping of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted by plants as sensitive indicators of abiotic/biotic stresses, as elicitors of plant defense against stresses, and as key components of plant interaction with other organisms (friends or foes).  

PHEN-ITALY also implements applications of artificial intelligence (AI) in plant phenotyping, in close collaboration with the National PhD school on AI applied to agrifood and the environment (PhD-AI).