United Kingdom
PhenomUK
The UK’s Commitment to EMPHASIS
The UK has been a strong supporter of EMPHASIS since its inception within the EPPN project and intends to join as a full Member when the infrastructure is formally established.
While the UK possesses significant phenotyping capabilities and resources, these have largely been developed independently—resulting in a landscape that is strong but fragmented.
The motivation for joining EMPHASIS is rooted in the belief that forming a national node and engaging with EMPHASIS will help consolidate the UK phenomics community and amplify its impact.
Participation is expected to:
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Spread best practices
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Expand access to facilities and expertise for UK scientists
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Strengthen collaboration with European partners
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Enable pursuit of new scientific directions, particularly those requiring multiple phenomic methods
Development of PhenomUK
PhenomUK has evolved through two nationally funded initiatives:
1. Technology Touching Life Network (2019–2023)
This initiative focused on community development, especially connecting engineers, computational scientists, and plant and crop researchers to explore and develop new tools and methods.
Key outcomes included:
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Funding 11 pilot technology development projects
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Launching an annual phenomics conference
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Attracting 700+ individual members to the community
2. UK Infrastructure Preliminary Activity (2023–2025)
This phase focused on scoping and developing a proposal for a nationwide phenomics infrastructure.
Activities included:
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Extending networking, engagement, and method development
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Mapping and identifying gaps in UK facilities, producing a national directory
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Operating access pilots to assess needs and explore legal and operational frameworks
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Evaluating data management and analysis requirements
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Producing a draft data policy and developing proof-of-concept tools, including PhenomUK-SEEK and PhenoAssistant, both beta-tested on community datasets
Building a Strong and Connected Community
The sustained engagement and consultation enabled by these projects have given UK phenomics a strong community identity and a clear understanding of its strengths and weaknesses.
This process has also increased awareness of the goals and potential benefits of EMPHASIS.
A particular strength of the UK’s multidisciplinary community lies in its capacity for innovation—developing novel methods and tools. Many UK phenotyping facilities are home-grown, and PhenomUK activities have demonstrated a continuing drive and ability to contribute in this way.
More Community members
Austria
APPN brings together Austria’s plant phenotyping community; researchers, breeders, data scientists, technology developers to build shared infrastructure and methods, promote collaboration, and raise the profile of phenotyping nationally and in Europe
Belgium
EMPHASIS-Belgium, the national node located in the host country for EMPHASIS-ERIC, takes a collaborative and service-oriented approach around multiscale plant phenotyping in Belgium via cutting-edge facilities, access provision and community engagement.
France
Phenome-Emphasis develops and provides access to a series of highly skilled indoor and field platforms while supporting tissue biochemistry, image analysis and data management services. These multi-scales evaluation of collections of genotypes across…
Ireland
Irish agriculture is a cornerstone, driving crop yield and disease research. PPN-Ireland (2016), an SFI-supported network, links eight institutes with major phenotyping investments. Teagasc phenotypes diverse crops across all environments, integrating…
Israel
More information coming soon.
Italy
The Italian Plant Phenotyping Network – PHEN-ITALY is a Joint Research Unit (JRU) composed of 18 partners whose mission is to promote, coordinate and facilitate the participation of the scientific community to national research on plant phenotyping, also…
Netherlands
Plants are absolutely essential to our future, where almost all our food, feed and materials will be derived from plants. Our aim is to enable the development of novel adaptive crops and cropping systems required for future food production and food…
Norway
PheNo provides a distributed national infrastructure across Norway for high-resolution controlled environment, field and seed phenotyping and data analysis services to support research and educational needs in academia and industry.
Portugal
Under EMPHASIS.PT, Portugal has established a cohesive plant phenotyping community. This network joins leading universities, research institutes, and collaborative labs from mainland Portugal and Madeira, ensuring a wide territorial coverage. The…
Switzerland
The research themes of the SPPN cover a wide range, from fundamental ecological and biological research using model plants and crops, to applied research in field and orchard crops. Plant phenotyping infrastructure is available at the landscape, field and…