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Phenome-Emphasis develops a versatile, high-throughput infrastructure and a suite of methods allowing characterisation of hundreds of genotypes of different plant species under environmental scenarios of climate changes (drought, high CO₂, high temperatures, new diseases). The project has:

• Built or upgraded highly instrumented platforms in nine French sites, allowing researchers to perform multi-scale phenomics (omics, controlled conditions, highly equipped fields, network of field experiments) for analysing the genetic variability of plant responses to biotic and abiotic stresses in a context of climate change.
• Developed hardware and software applications with technological jumps, including the development of new sensors, robots to manage them,  workflows and information systems able to cope with millions of data points.
• Disseminated techniques and methods towards the French phenotyping community (breeding companies, applied research institutes funded and driven by farmers, public research groups),
• Facilitated the  emergence of technology-provider SMEs for phenotyping and/or precision agriculture.

Phenome-Emphasis continues these activities, whereas identifying new objectives for the next period.

• Deploy an information system allowing the whole Plant Science community to re-analyze the information collected in the infrastructure, with the necessary environmental and meta data.
• Develop installations and methods facilitating the ago-ecological transition, in particular for analysis of biotic interactions.
• Fully Insert its activity in a European context with projects EPPN²⁰²⁰ and EMPHASIS

Phenome-Emphasis is an INBS (national biology and health infrastructure) funded by ANR till 2024 and is a Research Infrastructure identified in the French Road Map since 2016. It also is in the road maps of the GIS Biotechnologies Vertes and the of the competitiveness consortia Céréales Vallée/Nutravita, Terralia, Végépolys et Vitagora. It coordinates an integrated Infrastructure EU project (EPPN²⁰²⁰) and is WP leader in the preparatory phase for a European ESFRI infrastructure (EMPHASIS, ESFRI roadmap 2016). 

PHENOME, the French plant phenomic Infrastructure

Redactor: Pamela Lucas