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Digital Agriculture
Alyssa Weirman,Business Manager, High Resolution Plant Phenomics CentreJuly 2013
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Introduction
• What is Plant Phenomics and the High Resolution Plant Phenomics Centre (HRPPC)?– Why was the centre founded?– Technology – What research does the centre do? What is going on in modern plant science
• Plant Phenomics Teacher Resource– How can you use it in the classroom?
• Introduction to the Battle of the Plants Competition– Why use Brachypodium?– Timing the experiment – The growth pack and Brachypodium growth requirements– Taking digital photos– Analysis software
• The Battle of the Plants practical
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What is Plant Phenomics?Phenome = Genome X Environment
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What is Plant Phenomics?
• A plant’s genotype is all of its genes.
• A plant’s phenotype is how it looks and performs: – a plant’s phenotype is a combination of its genotype and the environment it
grows in– plants with the same genotype can have different phenotypes.
• Phenotyping is analysing a plant’s phenotype.
• Phenomics is a way of speeding up phenotyping using high-tech imaging systems and computing power.
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What does plant phenomics involve?
• Phenomics borrows imaging techniques from medicine to allow researchers to study the inner workings of leaves, roots or whole plants.
• Some phenomics techniques are:– 3D imaging– infrared imaging – fluorescence imaging– spectral reflectance.
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The Australian Plant Phenomics Facility
The Plant Accelerator™ Adelaide
High Resolution Plant Phenomics CentreCanberra
Highly cross disciplinary bringing engineering, machine vision, robotics, high performance computing and plant biology together
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High Resolution Plant Phenomics Centre
• The Centre’s researchers develop new ways to discover the function of genes and to screen plant varieties for useful agricultural traits.
• Researchers can grow plants in growth cabinets or in the field.
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The Plant Accelerator
• A high-tech glasshouse contains plant conveyor systems, and imaging, robotic and computing equipment.
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Controlled environment growth cabinets
High Resolution High Throughput: automated plant analysis
2000 plants per day
High Throughput Plant Biology
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Field technology The Phenomobile in action
2000 plants per day
High Throughput Plant Biology
An entire field per day
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An integrated 3-D multi-sensing tool to analyse plant performance
PlantScan
Xavier Sirault CSIRO
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Phenonet Sensor Network
• A network of data loggers collects information from a field of crops and sends it through the mobile phone network to researchers at the lab.
• Sensors include: – far infrared thermometer– weather station– soil moisture sensor– thermistor (soil
temperature)
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Multicopter
• The Multicopter can take infrared and colour images of a field from just a few centimetres above the ground to a height of up to 100 metres.
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Camera and images
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Thermal images of Arabidopsis RGB and Fluorescence images of Brachypodium
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Far Infrared Imaging
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• Cooler plants have better root systems and take up more water.
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Spectral reflectance
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• Spectral reflectance is the fraction of light reflected by a non-transparent surface.
Researchers can use spectral reflectance to tell if a plant is stressed by saline soil or drought, well before it can be seen by eye.
A hyperspectral camera measures all wavelengths of light that are either reflected or absorbed by a plant.
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Research – Improving Crop Yields
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• Yearly crop yield gains have slowed to the point of stagnation.
• Population growth + lack of suitable land + competition from biofuel crops + fertiliser costs + lack of water + climate change = potential global food crisis.
• Phenomics projects: – ‘Supercharging’ photosynthesis– Improving wheat yield– Brachypodium – the cereal ‘lab rat
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‘Supercharging’ photosynthesis
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• Plants have two major photosynthetic mechanisms: C3 and C4. Phenomics researchers want to replace the C3 pathway of rice with a more efficient C4 mechanism.
• C4 plants can concentrate carbon dioxide inside the leaf, and photosynthesise more efficiently than C3 plants, especially under:
– higher temperatures– drought conditions– limited nitrogen supplies.
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Brachypodium – the cereal ‘lab rat’
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• Phenomics researchers are using a small wild grass called Brachypodium distachyon as a wheat ‘lab rat’.
• Its entire genome is known• It has many genes in common with
wheat. • Researchers are studying root
formation in Brachypodium to speed up understanding of wheat roots.
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Research: crops to cope with climate change
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• Climate change is predicted to make crop growing conditions tougher in the future.
• Phenomics researchers are developing:– drought-tolerant wheat– salt-tolerant wheat and barley– non-food biofuel crops
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Plant Phenomics Teacher Resource
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Why do we need more agricultural scientists
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• By 2050, 9.1 billion people will populate the planet.
• We will need to produce 70 per cent more food to feed them, under tougher climate conditions.
• This is one of humanity’s greatest challenges.
• How can we do it?
• Three of the possible ways to help:– Improve crop yields– Breed crops that can cope with climate change– Develop biofuel crops that don’t compete with food crops.
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Battle of the Plants
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Registrations close 31st July
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Why Brachypodium?
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• Small• Short lifecycle (6-8 weeks)• Simple growth
requirements• Model research plant
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Battle of the plants - Timing
• Timing the experiment, choose any 8 week period during the official competition period according to your class schedule.
• The official competition period:24th June to 25th October 2013
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Battle of the plants – The Growth Pack
• The Growth Pack contains:– Seeds– Pots– Competition instructions– Image analysis instructions
• Brachypodium growth requirements– Growing medium– Sowing the seeds– Water– Light
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Battle of the plants – Taking Digital Photos
• You will need to take a digital photo in the 5th and 8th week after sowing.
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Battle of the plants – Analysis Software
• The image analysis software used in the competition can be downloaded for free at http://rsbweb.nih.gov/ij/download.html
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Any questions?
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Thank you
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