GRDC invests a further $4.5m in APPN mobile phenotyping

This investment is in addition to the $2 million GRDC invested in APPN technologies during 2024, plus $60 million from the National Collaborative Research Investment Strategy (NCRIS) and investments from state governments, industry partners and our host organisations.

GRDC’s latest support will enable APPN to provide a consistent national ecosystem of mobile phenotyping technologies, so research projects can utilise identical platforms and algorithms for field trials from Western Australia to Queensland.

APPN Field Phenotyping Director Trevor Garnett said the new equipment represents a major advancement in Australian plant phenotyping capacity.

“Backed by APPN’s in-house machine learning, computer science and data analytics expertise, the consistent technologies of our mobile phenotyping unit fleet will allow researchers to collaborate more effectively across regions and disciplines, while ensuring the data they produce is reliable and directly comparable,” he said.

The mobile phenotyping units being enabled by GRDC investment include:

• APPN CALVIS - one of the most advanced airborne units ever deployed for Australian agricultural research. It features a high resolution co-aligned hyperspectral and LiDAR sensor package, which can be used to measure a wide range of visible and non-visible traits as well as each plant’s physical structure.
• APPN GOBI - a UAV-mounted unified high resolution RGB, VNIR and LiDAR sensor package with precisely aligned GPS data, for measuring a wide range of traits at plant, plot or paddock scale. Ideal for analysing biomass, water stress, grain fill, disease impacts, nutrient deficiencies and much more.
• APPN HI-RES - a UAV-mounted camera system that deploys a 120MP camera capable of capturing crop images at up to 12 frames per second. These images can then be analysed manually or using machine learning solutions to assess plant counts and emergence rates, plant structure, visible disease impact, symptoms of biotic or abiotic stress and more.
• APPN LITERAL - an innovative pedestrian phenotyping system worn by an operator for overhead scanning of plants using a near infrared (NIR) scanner and twin RGB (visual light) cameras. Preconfigured algorithms enable rapid analysis of early vigour, plant height, leaf area, wheat head counts and more.
• APPN TEMS - trial environment monitoring system for high resolution recording of environmental factors at trial sites, including air temperature, relative humidity, rainfall, wind, sunlight, soil moisture, soil temperature and more.

Our mobile phenotyping units are deployed by the APPN field research nodes at Adelaide, Gatton, Narrabri, Northam, Perth and Wagga Wagga.

Read the full GRDC announcement here

3 November 2025