The APPF relieves the 'phenotyping bottleneck' which has, until now, limited our ability to capitalise on substantial government and industry investments already made in plant functional genomics and modern breeding technologies.

The Vision

The APPF is a national facility, available to all Australian plant scientists, offering access to infrastructure that is not available at this scale or breadth in the public sectors anywhere else in the world. The APPF is based around automated image analysis of the phenotypic characteristics of extensive germplasm collections and large breeding, mapping and mutant populations. It exploits recent advances in robotics, imaging and computing to enable sensitive, high throughput analyses to be made of plant growth and function. New technologies will be developed to ensure that the APPF remains at the international forefront of plant science. Research networks and established pathways to market will ensure outcomes are delivered for the long-term benefit for Australian scientists and primary producers.

The APPF has two nodes, The Plant Accelerator involving the research institutions at the Waite Campus of the University of Adelaide and The High Resolution Plant Phenomics Centre involving CSIRO Plant Industry and the Australian National University in Canberra.

The APPF provides:

• Sophisticated controlled environments for growing plants across a range if climatic conditions.
• Glasshouse automation technologies to study large populations of plants rapidly and efficiently.
• Leading-edge digital imaging technologies and sophisticated software to measure plant characteristics and their performance in real time.
• The capacity to 'scale up' plant performance measurements from the glasshouse to the field.
• A national focus for scientists to collaborate on key biological and agricultural research problems.
• A unique and integrated system for the rapid capture of genetic resource information and its shared use for plant science and agriculture, both within Australia and internationally.

Applications include:

• Functional genomics of model and crop species
• Screening of mutant or mapping populations, screening for natural variation in diverse populations
• Unravelling signal transduction and environmental interactions
• Climate change research
• Development of novel products for healthy foods
• Development of sustainable practices in agriculture
• Maintenance of biodiversity and the development of new strategies for the remediation of degraded landscapes
• Using plants and biofactories to produce new pharmaceuticals and other products for industry