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A multidisciplinary approach to the phenotyping process
Major improvements in crop performance are needed to keep pace with population growth (which is driving up global food demand) and climate change (which is increasing the vulnerability of cropping systems to extreme weather events).
Though the tools needed to support studies of plants’ genetic structure (the genome) are well developed. Profiling the structure and function of plants (the phenome) remains a major bottleneck.
Solutions addressing this bottleneck will be multidisciplinary, requiring engineering and computer science as well as plant biology. Novel sensor, robotic and data analysis techniques are needed.
“Ensuring that UK scientists have access to the innovative technological capabilities needed to drive world-leading basic discovery research in the plant, crop and agricultural sciences”
Building on new advances
A deeper understanding of national plant phenotyping capabilities
The Technology Touching Life network PhenomUK will build on new advances in fundamental engineering and physical sciences, bringing the necessary disciplines into closer contact and promoting an integrated, holistic view of the phenotyping process across the UK.
PhenomUK will fund a number of visits, workshops, pilot projects each year.
Register to receive calls and submit your proposals
Building a community
Expression of Interest – Phenotyping Facilities
BBSRC recently announced a 2-year £2.4M Infrastructure Scoping Project which aims to address the challenges of crop resilience and global food security through a national distributed infrastructure in plant and crop phenotyping.
A key goal of this project is to assess the feasibility of a mechanism for national plant and crop phenotyping facility access.
A community workshop will be held in September to consider the way forward in detail, but to inform that discussion PhenomUK is gathering initial community thoughts and reactions. Please help us in this by answering the following few, short questions.
The information acquired through this survey will be summarised and the summary presented without attribution to inform discussion at the September UKPCPI workshop. Responses will be stored by PhenomUK and may be shared with UKRI to inform future UKPCPI planning but not otherwise distributed or published.
