Norwegian Plant Phenotyping Infrastructure

Advanced research facilities are needed to meet the needs for increased food production under the challenging Norwegian climate conditions. By adopting new plant phenotyping technologies, we can make more precise measurements of the growth, development and stress responses of plants under different growing conditions. Such precise data makes it easier to find the genes behind important plant traits. It will be of great help for understanding basic biological processes, for breeding new improved plant varieties and obtaining better end-use quality. The establishment of the Norwegian Plant Phenotyping Infrastructure (PheNo) will give the plant research communities and industry actors in Norway access to new and advanced research technologies for plant phenotyping. The infrastructure project is a collaboration between the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU), the University of Oslo (UiO), the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), the Arctic University of Norway (UiT) and the Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research (NIBIO). Investments will be made in new equipment and facilities for phenotyping plants under controlled growth conditions and in the field, as well as automatic phenotyping of seeds, located close to the important research communities in Ås, Oslo, Gjøvik, Apelsvoll, Særheim and Tromsø. Alongside investments in new equipment, resources will be used to automate data processing and develop new data analysis methods. Courses in the use of new phenotyping methods will also be offered. The new plant phenotyping services will be made available to all relevant academic and industry users. PheNo will become part of EMPHASIS, which is the joint European infrastructure collaboration in plant phenotyping. Through this collaboration, Norwegian researchers can gain access to advanced research facilities across Europe, while we can offer European researchers phenotyping of plants under the unique climate conditions we have in Norway.

Advances in plant research and industrial innovations will be crucial for increasing food production and adapting to climate change. Recent years have seen big advancements in molecular genetics and genomics while the quantitative analysis of plant phenotypes has become the major bottleneck. PheNo will provide the Norwegian research community with needed plant phenotyping facilities to address these challenges and enable high quality research at the international forefront across the scale from basic plant biology to applied plant breeding. State-of-the-art facilities for phenotyping of plants under controlled climate conditions in growth chambers and daylight phytotrons will be provided at localized facilities with specialized competences and unique growth conditions operated by the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU), the University of Oslo (UiO), the Arctic university of Norway (UiT) and the Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research (NIBIO). To serve plant breeding and agricultural research on crop plants, field phenotyping facilities will be established at NMBU and NIBIO with use of UAVs and digital field operations. Networks of environmental sensors will couple the phenotype data to soil and air parameters, and polytunnels will enable drought tolerance screening under semi-controlled field conditions. The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) will contribute expertise on image analysis and deep learning. Affordable high-quality phenotyping will be provided to users by use of flexible solutions that can be tailored to user needs and adhering to user community standards. Internationalization of Norwegian plant research will be facilitated through collaboration in the ESFRI roadmap project EMPHASIS, where PheNo will serve as the Norwegian node. This will make the infrastructure available to research groups across Europe and at the same time facilitate access for Norwegian researchers to the other European research infrastructures.