Get ready for the future of plant vision

There are many interests for Europe to favour the investment in the development of the phenotyping technology:
- Improve breeding techniques and efficiency with an increased genomics understanding and applicability
- Build infrastructure to provide the scientific community with the necessary tools to answer biological question: physiology, stress tolerance, yield components and productivity… that may help to solve future challenges: climate change, biotic and abiotic stresses and thus help to protect European agriculture

Plant phenotyping, which connects attributes of plant anatomy, physiology and performance back to their genetic origins and xenobiotic influences, is crucial for plant breeding. Traditional human observation is tarred with its subjective nature, drift over time, differences between observers and its often qualitative output. Machine vision offers solutions to these problems and in addition benefits from a fully quantitative output, abilities to look beyond human spectral perception, and measure parameters that are more challenging to the human observer.

Plant roots are economically very relevant since the distribution pattern of the root system in the soil determines the zone of water and nutrient availability to plants and differences in root and root development is related to crop yields and abilities to escape drought and soil-borne diseases.

The design modularity of the greenhouses and climatic chambers allows various growth conditions for plant in order to mimic most of the environmental scenarios in the context of climate change. Climatic chambers are either equipped with conveyors in line with phenotyping cabins, used for large biological units and rhizotrons or devoted to the “small biological units” (ie seeds, plantlets, microbiological petri dishes) phenotyped in a cabinet (called “HTS”) where mobile cameras screen the culture zone.