PhenoFab®
In the plant breeding industry phenotyping is one of the most crucial aspects of variety development. Phenotyping is laborious and requires significant experience and a professional breeder’s eye. The high complexity of agronomically important traits makes it even more difficult to perform objective and robust phenotyping in a high throughput manner.
In contrast, the enormous accomplishments that have been achieved in highthroughput, sequence-based plant genotyping emphasize the need to scale up the development of automated phenotyping technology. PhenoFab® is a greenhouse service operation that combines high-throughput, non-invasive technology with trait
interpretation to exploit phenotypic variation. It closes the “phenotyping gap”.
The PhenoFab® services are delivered with a robust phenotyping platform in a greenhouse setup. Determination of the phenotype is
based on moving pots or trays with plants through a greenhouse compartment and fixed scanning areas containing image technology
to capture digital data. The plants grow in individual containers/tray-wells and are scanned at preset time points from various angles
using VIS (visible light), NIR and fluorescent imaging technology.
The facility has climate-controlled compartments that allow plants to grow up to 2.6 m under different environmental conditions, enabling
experiments with different growth or stress factors. Depending on the plant size and experimental setup the capacity will vary
around an average of 1,100 plants.
The facility for the PhenoFab® service provides:
- More than 300 m2 modern greenhouse space (PK2 certified) allocated for phenotyping;
- Objective phenotyping studies in controlled environments, using
a dedicated greenhouse with specific hardware; - Digital phenotyping combined with specifically designed statistical approaches developed for different type of Crops;
- Trait analysis on e. g. colour, shoot & biomass development, heritability, root development, canopy structure, as well as (a)biotic stress analysis;
- Multilevel digital trait observations of individual plants (e. g. angles, time series, light filtering);
- Proprietary software tools for image-to-digital phenotype and statistical analysis;
- Completely integrated image and result database to store experimental data (similar to LIMS);
- Water/nutrient supply controlled at individual plant level.
High-Throughput Phenotyping -- A Boost For Genomics In The 21st Century