NOVA-412 High Throughput Field Phenotyping

The changing climate demands developing faster breeding methods to provide effective solutions for the future agriculture. This course aims to introduce the emerging research fields of high throughput plant phenotyping used for plant-environment interactions, with a focus on field phenotyping methodologies and data related analysis.

The course aims to introduce the emerging technologies related to i) controlled environments that allow simulations and testing future climatic conditions, ii) automated and image based plant phenotyping technologies that are to remove bottlenecks in between genotype to phenotype screens, iii) high throughput field phenotyping technologies and iv) transcriptomics with bioinformatics and R-computing that are required for the deeper understanding of the molecular networks. A special focus will be put on giving the students hands-on training in use of field phenotyping methodologies, including gathering data from hand-held devices and UAVs and robots, and analysis of the data to answer biological questions. The objective of the course is to provide the participating students with the basic knowledge and understanding of the emerging fields of plant phenomics and data processing that can serve breeding efforts in modern agriculture.

Participation in lectures and daily learning diaries (2 ECTS)

• knowledge about the whole range of analysis sensors available for plant phenotyping
• knowledge about standard data analysis pipelines for field phenotyping data
• gaining understanding of the opportunities and challenges in experimental design in plant phenotyping

Participation in the workshops (1 ECTS)

• gaining hands on experience in field phenotyping methodologies, image-based data acquisition, and data processing

Literature study, presentation and lab report as pre and post assignments (2 ECTS)

• gaining deeper understanding of the chosen biological process and chosen technology through own study
• application of gained knowledge in the writing of the lab report (post course assignment)