What is plant phenomics?
Plant phenomics involves analysing of the physical and biochemical traits of a plant as it responds to genetic mutation and environmental influences…
Phenomics is an area of biology concerned with the measurement of phenomes – the physical and biochemical traits of organisms – as they change in response to genetic mutation and environmental influences.
The phenome is all the possible expressions of an organism’s genetics, while a phenotype is an individual and its observable characteristics.
Captured phenomics data supports the discovery of molecular markers and the development of specific germplasm, which is crucial to developing crop improvements such as higher yields and greater tolerance of biotic or abiotic stresses such as diseases, pests, drought and soil constraints.
In the past, phenomics assessments would be performed manually by researchers. However, with crop trials often involving hundreds of plants, this could be extremely time and labour intensive. Subjective assessments could also vary between studies – or even individual researchers. And in most cases the plants, which may have taken months to grow, would have to be cut up to be assessed.
APPN infrastructure provides growth facilities that enable specific environmental influences to be isolated and studied, along with high-throughput digital technologies to objectively measure and analyse a wide variety of phenotypic markers quickly, objectively and non-destructively.