An award is made to Iowa State University to develop a high-throughput, large-scale plant phenotyping instrumentation for knowledge discovery in plant phenomics area. Characterization of the complete plant phenome has posed a difficult challenge due to the large number of genes in the genomes, and changeable environmental conditions that influence plant phenotypes. Analyzing plant phenotypes on a large and multi-scale level with sufficient throughput and resolution has thus been difficult and expensive. This project will lead to the development of microsystem technology based plant phenotyping instrumentation, and therefore will constitute a transformative leap in throughput and information content over existing phenotype assays. The core of the instrumentation is an integrated plant growth system consisting of an array of miniature greenhouses, microfluidic plant chips, and microfluidic control logic. The plant growth system can provide maximal environmental flexibility in large- and multi-scale study of plant-environment interactions. The miniature greenhouses will flexibly regulate relative humidity, carbon dioxide level, and light intensity. The microfluidic plant chips will be designed to be sliding chip-like disposable components for use inside the greenhouses. Each plant chip will not only allow a number of plants to simultaneously grow for a desired period of time, but be able to automatically trap individual seeds, change growth temperature, regulate chemical concentration, and introduce biological species to the plant growth regions. A programmable imaging system will be designed to collect images of plant seeds, roots, shoots, and cells. To quantify morphological traits and determine phenotypic differences in a high throughput manner, an automated algorithm will be developed to extract and analyze images acquired during plant growth and development. Arabidopsis thaliana will be used as a model plant for biological verification of the instrumentation.
The project will contribute to systematic analysis of plant phenotypes with a wide range of applications in gene identification, functional genomics, and genotype-to-phenotype correlations. Large and multi-scale phenotyping of plants, in concert with changeable growth environmental influences, has broad implications in applied and basic plant biology. The proposed instrumentation will make breakthrough toward solving grand challenging large-scale problems in the field of phenomics, will build resources to benefit plant biology researchers, and will create a paradigm shift in the plant phenomics area by placing powerful data analysis capability in the hands of researchers. The education plans include providing an interdisciplinary opportunity to three doctoral students and four undergraduate students including two female and minority students, creating a one-credit seminar course for the Undergraduate Bioengineering Minor Program, and adding a new lab to existing undergraduate and graduate courses at Iowa State. The dissemination plan includes providing phenotying services to plant biologists at Iowa State and beyond through extensive collaborations, organizing Plant Phenomics workshop, partnering with national laboratories to disseminate phenotying services, and commercializing the instrumentation through the small business innovation research or small business technology transfer mechanism.
