EMPHASIS is 28th Research Infrastructure collaborating in ENVRIplus project

EMPHASIS is a pan-European distributed plant phenotyping infrastructure on the ESFRI Roadmap, currently in the development phase. EMPHASIS will focus on enabling access to plant phenotyping infrastructure and provision of services, essential for the analysis of crop performance with respect to structure, function, quality and interaction with the environment. It will thus support the exploitation of crop genetic diversity required for the enhancement of plant productivity and progress in plant breeding.emphasis-logo[1]

Plant derived products are at the centre of grand challenges posed by increasing requirements for food, feed and bio-based raw materials. Integrating approaches across all scales from molecular to field applications are necessary to develop sustainable plant production with higher yield and at the same time using limited resources. While significant progress has been made in molecular and genetic approaches in recent years, the quantitative analysis of plant performance has become the major bottleneck. The challenge is to address multi-scale phenotyping for analysing genotype performance under diverse environmental conditions and quantify the diversity of traits contributing to performance, i.e. plant architecture, major functions, yield components and quality. Improvement of plant performance under changing climates requires the use of different categories of infrastructure combined with a coordinated infrastructure for storing and analysing data, and platforms for plant/crop modelling associated with phenotyping platforms.

Thus, plant phenotyping focuses on development and implementation of non-invasive technology, which can be used beyond plant sciences in disciplines such as image analysis, remote sensing or automation engineering. Additionally, plant phenotyping produces a number of data relevant for basic understanding in life sciences.

More information about EMPHASIS can be found on the RI’s website: https://emphasis.plant-phenotyping.eu/

Cooperation with ENVRIplus

Emphasis will contribute to the following Themes and Work Packages of ENVRIPlus:

T2: Data for science

Emphasis develops an e‐infrastructure for plant phenotyping data stemming from different types of platforms, taking into account the full data cycle and enabling its management, sharing, reusing and visualisation. EMPHASIS activities to that end could well contribute to the aims of WP5, 7 and 9.

T3: Access to Research Infrastructures

Emphasis aims at providing sustainable access to plant phenotyping infrastructures, based on access policies and user needs. EMPHASIS could thus especially contribute to the strategy development of WP 10 ‐ Governance based on this expertise and experience.

T5: Knowledge transfer

Emphasis aims at increasing the impact of plant phenotyping infrastructures by optimizing the development, operation and use of plant phenotyping infrastructures throughout Europe. One key aspect with that regard will be the increase of competences at the infrastructures, but also on the side of infrastructure users. To that end, EMPHASIS develops exchange programms and training courses and would like to contribute to WP 15 (Training) and WP 16 (Staff exchange).

Contact Roland Pieruschka and Sven Fahrner for more information about EMPHASIS and its collaboration with ENVRIplus.