Controlled Environment Phenotyping Installations (CEPI)

The Arabidopsis WIWAM is a phenotyping system for small-sized plants with rosette-type shoot architecture, and is located in a controlled-environment growth chamber. It provides automated imaging, and weighing and irrigation of plants according to a pre-set scheme, specific for each plant or group of plants. This may include fixed quantities of water or any other type of solution, or irrigation to a certain target weight determined by the requested soil humidity levels. The system is thus ideally suited to impose soil water deficit treatments, or the assessment of effects on shoot growth of soil-added solutions. A robotic arm moves individual pots to the imaging and weighing and irrigation stations and puts them back in the growth area at a position which is either fixed or determined by a randomization scheme. An image analysis script extracts rosette surface area and other rosette features such as compactness, perimeter and stockiness.

The maize WIWAM, also named ‘SHRIMPY’ (System for High-throughput Recording and Imaging of Maize Phenotypes related to Yield), is a phenotyping system designed for crops, and is located in a controlled-environment growth chamber. It provides automated imaging, and weighing and irrigation of plants according to a pre-set scheme, specific for each plant or group of plants. This may include fixed quantities of solution, or irrigation to a certain target weight determined by the requested soil humidity levels. The system is thus ideally suited to impose soil water deficit treatments. Plants are positioned in tables which are sorted in rows. The robot arm pushes the tables aside to move in between the rows, where it locates a pot and lifts it out of the table. The robot then takes the pot to the rotating platform of the weighing and irrigation station. For the imaging of plants, pots are taken to a designated area at the back of the growth chamber where plants are rotated in front of a RGB camera for multiple angle imaging.

PHENOVISION is a greenhouse infrastructure for high-throughput phenotyping of crops. Pots are transported in carriers on a conveyor belt system from the stationary growth area of the platform to one of three weighing and irrigation stations with rotating platforms and the possibility to apply water and up to three different solutions. Plants are also transported to imaging cabins, which are enclosed areas with camera-adapted lighting conditions and a lift with rotating platform. At present, three camera systems are available. The first one consists of RGB cameras in a multi-view imaging setup for the three-dimensional reconstruction of plants and the measurement of growth-related phenotypic traits. Plant physiology-related traits are measured or approximated by a thermal infrared camera and a hyperspectral imaging system, consisting of a visible to near-infrared camera (VNIR, 400-1000 nm) and a short-wave infrared camera (SWIR, 1000-2500 nm).