KeyGene expands the use of robotized and automated phenotyping

KeyGene recently announced that the automated and robotized plant phenotyping facility -PhenoFab® has expanded its digital phenotyping service portfolio.

To date the majority of PhenoFab phenotyping projects focused on various breeding traits like drought, biomass, architecture, water/nutrient use efficiency, correlating yield parameters with early stage plant digital traits etc. With extended knowledge and expertise in the field of digital phenotyping and novel and innovative approaches, PhenoFab® has realized additional crop and seed applications. Applications that now have been developed and services available are geared towards crop protection industries involved in seed treatment, development of new agro chemicals and biologicals. Using these new phenotyping applications the crop protection industry can now test and precisely measure the effects of their products on the growth of crop plants and their wellbeing. Such studies help to precisely define the combinatorial effects of the seed/chemical/biological treatment on the growth of various crops for different genotypes under different growing conditions. The ability to measure even the smallest growth differences provides the customers with vital feedback to improve their products and boost their R&D and marketing efforts towards the development and characterization of innovative and competitive products. Results will be presented by Dr. Shital Dixit at the International Plant and Animal Genome Conference Asia to be held on May 19-21, 2014 in Singapore.

Shital Dixit, Business Development Manager of KeyGene: “The PhenoFab center is a fully automated greenhouse facility with a capacity of more than 1000 plants on a conveyor belt combined with different camera systems for non-destructive measurements. We use our strong crop and breeding expertise, proprietary phenotyping algorithms and data analysis tools to provide our clients complete solution packages in service projects. I am proud that we, together with our clients are in a perfect position to develop innovative agro products and new crop varieties that help to feed the world for now and in the future.”