EMPHASIS-PREP Deliverable D3.4: Foresight study and trend analysis to evaluate future developments in plant phenotyping

Executive Summary

Plant phenotyping was established as a tool to address the bottleneck in basic plant science to understand the plant –environment interaction and translate this knowledge into application. Plant phenotyping has largely benefited over the last 10-15 years from technological development in non-invasive sensor technology paired with automation and engineering leading to substantial investment and development of high throughput plant phenotyping installations. The access to the installations is demanded by the user community, which was demonstrated by the infrastructure projects EPPN and EPPN2020 leading to the development of the Research infrastructure EMPHASIS which is supposed to provide a coordinated effort to integrate the plant phenotyping activities in Europe and explore the full potential of plant phenotyping.

Plant phenotyping will most likely further benefit from technological developments and by integrated effort which includes shared use of the facilities deliver towards systemic solution of grand challenges related to sustainable agriculture. Further development will also include the use of plant phenotyping as a tool another disciplines leading to further diversification of solutions needed to address different crops, environmental scenarios, agroecology aspects etc. Commitment of policy makers and funders is essential to develop a long term strategy.