Co-PIs: Kevin Price (Kansas State University)
Collaborators: Michael Gore, Andrew French, Kelly Thorp, Jeff White (USDA-ARS); Pedro Andrade-Sanchez (University of Arizona); Allan Fritz, Randy Price, William Schapaugh, Stephen Welch, Naiqian Zhang (Kansas State University)
The essence of plant biology is to understand the link between genetic variation and observed phenotypes. While genotyping can now be accomplished with low-cost, next-generation sequencing technologies, phenotyping is labor intensive and has become the limiting factor in plant biology studies and crop improvement programs. This project will develop transformational capacity for field-based high throughput phenotyping (HTP) by creating platforms for rapid assessment of multiple quantitative plant traits. Proximal sensing tools and GPS referencing will be integrated to develop mobile platforms that are low-cost, flexible, robust, and amenable for a range of species. A central premise of this work is that integrating streams of data from multiple types of sensors will increase both the accuracy and number of traits that can be quantified for field grown plants. Thus, a second objective is to develop novel algorithms for analyzing HTP data to quantitatively estimate phenotypes expressed in field environments. The newly developed sensor systems, indexes, and algorithms will be applied in test cases that examine multiple quantitative traits in wheat, soybean and cotton.
The development of HTP platforms will complement the explosion of genomic information currently being collected and will enable field level experimental biology on a scale that has not been previously possible. Because the focus of this project is on field-based assessment of economically important crop species that represent different plant types and production systems, the platform and analytic methods developed in this project are expected to have broad application to a range of target environments and species and allow scalability for larger studies. The tools and methods developed will be transferred to the scientific community through hands-on training workshops. Training materials, equipment designs and software will be publicly available through a project website. This project will provide training for graduate and postgraduate scholars while hosting multiple internships for undergraduate engineering and plant science students in the field of HTP.
