Phenotyping: New Windows into the Plant for Breeders

Abstract

Plant phenotyping enables noninvasive quantification of plant structure and function and interactions with environments. High-capacity phenotyping reaches hitherto inaccessible phenotypic characteristics. Diverse, challenging, and valuable applications of phenotyping have originated among scientists, prebreeders, and breeders as they study the phenotypic diversity of genetic resources and apply increasingly complex traits to crop improvement. Noninvasive technologies are used to analyze experimental and breeding populations. We cover the most recent research in controlled-environment and field phenotyping for seed, shoot, and root traits. Select field phenotyping technologies have become state of the art and show promise for speeding up the breeding process in early generations. We highlight the technologies behind the rapid advances in proximal and remote sensing of plants in fields. We conclude by discussing the new disciplines working with the phenotyping community: data science, to address the challenge of generating FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable) data, and robotics, to apply phenotyping directly on farms.