United Kingdom

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 established. While the UK has significant phenotyping capability and resources these have for the most part been developed independently: our phenomics provision is individually strong but our landscape is fragmented. Our motivation for joining EMPHASIS stems from a belief that forming a national node of and engaging with EMPHASIS will both consolidate the UK phenomics community and amplify its impact. We hope it will spread best practice, expand the range of facilities and expertise available to UK scientists, increase collaboration with colleagues across Europe and allow us to pursue new scientific directions, particularly those requiring multiple phenomic methods. 

PhenomUK has developed through two nationally funded initiatives. A Technology Touching Life Network (2019-2023) focussed on community development, with a particular emphasis on bringing together engineers, computational, plant and crop scientists to investigate and develop new methods and tools. The network funded 11 pilot technology development projects, initiated an annual phenomics conference meeting and attracted 700+ individual members. Building upon this, a UK Infrastructure Preliminary Activity (2023-2025) scoped and developed a proposal for a nationwide phenomics infrastructure. The Preliminary Activity continued and extended networking, engagement and method development activities, mapped, gapped and produced a directory of UK facilities. It operated a series of access pilots, demonstrating need and investigating the legal and operational issues associated with a UK infrastructure. UK data management analysis needs were assessed, a draft data policy produced, and proof of concept hardware and tools (PhenomUK-SEEK, PhenoAssistant) developed and beta-tested on community-sourced data sets. 

The sustained high level of community engagement and consultation enabled by these two projects have given UK phenomics a strong community identity, a sound understanding of its strengths and weaknesses and widespread understanding of the goals and potential benefits of EMPHASIS. A particular strength of our multidisciplinary community is its ability to develop novel methods and tools; many of our facilities are home-grown, and PhenomUK activities to date have revealed a wish and ability to continue to contribute in this way.