Partner


Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique

First agricultural institute in Europe and second in the world, INRA carries out mission-oriented research for towards better food and nutrition, preservation of the environment and competitive, sustainable agricultural practices. Three INRA divisions are involved in this project: Environment and Agronomy (EA), through the LEPSE & Agroecology Joint Research Units, Plant Biology and Breeding (BAP), through the GDEC, BFP & IRHS Joint Research Units and PHACC Experimental Unit, Applied Mathematics and Informatics (MIA) through the MISTEA Joint Research Unit.

People involved:

  • Dr. François Tardieu – LEPSE
  • Dr. Christophe Salon - Agroecology
  • Dr Jacques Le Gouis - GDEC
  • Dr Yves Gibon - BFP
  • Pascal Neveu - MISTEA
  • Dr Marie-Agnès Jacques
  • Dr Tristan Boureau

Aberystwyth University

Aberystwyth University is a public higher education institution founded in 1872. The NPPC is a National Facility established within IBERS by the BBSRC and Welsh Government. Its core remit is to develop high throughput phenotyping platforms and associated technologies, and to provide access to these and associated technologies to the plant biology research community. The NPPC will be involved mainly in providing Transnational Access to 2 automated platforms, one for large plants, one for small plants, and an instrumented hydroponics platform. The NPPC will also contribute to other WPs as required.

People involved:

  • Professor John H Doonan
  • Dr. Anyela Camargo-Rodriguez
  • Mr Alan Gay
  • Dr Kevin Williams
  • Dr Fiona Corke
  • Mrs Ros Matthews
  • Dr Colin Sauze

Basilicata Agency of Develop. and Innovation in Agriculture

ALSIA is the Basilicata Region Agency for Development and Innovation in the agrofood and agroindustry sectors. The Agency owns Metapontum Agrobios Research Center, engaged in the development and transfer of innovation in agriculture and agro-industrial system centred on plant and green biotechnology. ALSIA manages a network of 7 Experimental Farms through which it develops research, experimentation and dissemination.

People involved:

  • Dr. Francesco Cellini
  • Dr. Angelo Petrozza
  • Dr. Stephan Summerer

Advanced Solutions Accelerator

SME, based in South of France, providing solutions and services for Scientific and Technicak Research Projects. Highly involved in large scale scientific investment for Database management, Web portal Design, and High Performance Computing.

People involved:

  • Fred VIART
  • Christine CARTIER
  • Valentin BOUQUET

Aarhus Universitet - Department of Food Science

AU possesses leading capabilities and resources, as well as active national and international networks, and is therefore able to make significant contributions to current food-related global challenges: food supply, food wastage, sustainable food production under changed climatic conditions, and increased occurrence of lifestyle-related diseases. Additional focus areas include food quality, differentiation of foods, and novel, convenient and healthy foods. Most of the research is carried out in collaboration with industrial or research partners, and there is a significant focus on dissemination, development, demonstration and implementation of research findings to the benefit of industry and society. The expertise in the research group for Plant, Food and Environment is the leading expertise in Northern Europe in protected climate conditon and has an extensive expetise in crop physiology. The group will perform the intial test and development of protocols and coordinate the transfer of knowledge to the commercial partners.

People involved:

  • Professor Carl-Otto Ottosen

Australian Plant Phenomics Facility

APPF is a world-class plant analysis facility located at CSIRO, Black Mountain in Canberra and at the University of Adelaide. The APPF is based around automated image analysis of the phenotypic characteristics of extensive germplasm collections and large breeding, mapping and mutant populations. It exploits recent advances in robotics, imaging and computing to enable sensitive, high throughput analyses to be made of plant growth and function form the microscopic scale to the farm level. New technologies are being developed to ensure that the APPF remains at the international forefront of plant science. Research networks and established pathways to market ensure outcomes are delivered for the long-term benefit for Australian scientists and primary producers. Over the last 5 years, the APPF has developed a number of integrated phenotyping pipelines commonly used in industrial applications and research centres across Australia; APPF has also been a pioneer in the use of sensor networks for characterisation of environmental variation (phenoNet and sensorDB) and semantics technologies for the management, storage and retrieval of very large, heterogeneous phenomics datasets (PODD). The APPF has been part of the previous EPPN initiative and involved in a number of common activities.

Involved people:

  • Dr Xavier Sirault
  • Dr Bettina Berger

Wageningen UR

Wageningen UR is collaboration between Wageningen University and the specialized former research institutes (DLO) from the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture. This combination of knowledge and experience enables Wageningen UR with its 5,600 staff and more than 8,500 students to contribute actively to solving scientific, social and commercial problems in the field of life sciences and natural resources. Wageningen UR Food and Biobased Research, one of the DLO institutes has strong network with industrial partners and academia, long-term relationships have generated an excellent track record in plant phenotyping with a focus on fast the 3D reconstruction of small and large plants in combination with robotics for the integration of automated phenotyping experiments.

People involved:

  • Rick van de Zedde MSc
  • Dr. Gert Kootstra
  • Dr. Lydia Meesters

Forschungszentrum Jülich - IBG2

The Institute for Bio- and Geosciences (IBG-2) is part of the Forschungszentrum Jülich (Jülich, Germany), joining 9 institutes with 51 departments with a research focus on medicine and neurosciences, complex systems, energy and climate, bio- and geosciences, simulation sciences and nanotechnology. The Forschungszentrum Jülich has 5800 employees including about 2000 scientists and 800 guest scientists. It is member of the Helmholtz Association, the umbrella organization of the 16 national labs of Germany. The IBG-2: Plant Sciences has about 150 institute members. The IBG-2 has a strong expertise in quantitative analyses of plant growth, transport, and exchange processes under controlled conditions and in the field. IBG-2 is a leading laboratory in the field of non-invasive technology for the analysis of plant x environment interactions and in the development of novel technology for online plant analysis by optical as well as non-optical sensors. IBG2 will be involved in Transnational Access and …

People involved:

  • Prof. Dr. Ulrich Schurr
  • Dr. Fabio Fiorani
  • Dr. Dagmar van Dusschoten
  • Dr Robert Koller
  • Dr. Simone Gatzke
  • Dr. Onno Muller
  • Dr. Roland Pieruschka

Leibniz - Institut Fuer Pflanzengenetik Und Kulturpflanzenforschung

IPK Gatersleben is a publically funded research institute and member of the Leibniz Association of 89 institutions conducting research and/or providing scientific infrastructure. IPK has more than 500 employees working in four scientific departments and in the administration department. Its 30 scientific groups (http://www.ipk-gatersleben.de) conduct interdisciplinary fundamental as well as application-oriented plant research with emphasis on crop plants supported by the use of model species. Processes leading to trait expression are elucidated at the molecular, cellular, and organismic level and approaches for modulation and improvement of plant performance are developed. Addressing the bio-diversity captured in the 150,000 accessions of the German Federal ex situ Genebank of crop plants and their wild relatives kept at IPK, the main research topics are i) maintenance and valorisation of plant genetic resources, ii) genome diversity and evolution, iii) plant reproductive processes, iv) plant growth and metabolism, and v) plant-environment interactions. Extensive efforts led to the establishment of plant phenotyping platforms for non-destructive and quantitative assessment of plant properties at the single cell, organ, and whole plant levels, which are constantly upgraded and extended and which complement biochemistry, cell biology, physiology, molecular genetics, cytogenetics, taxonomy and bioinformatics approaches using `omics´/system biological strategies.

People involved:

  • Prof. Dr. Thomas Altmann
  • Dr. Astrid Junker
  • Dr. David Riewe 

Helmholtz Zentrum Muenchen Deutsches Forschungszentrum Fuer Gesundheit Und Umwelt GmbH

Helmholtz Zentrum München (HMGU) is a research institution of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Free State of Bavaria. The research mission of HMGU is to increase understanding of disease mechanisms that affect human beings and essential parts of their environment. The Institute of Biochemical Plant Pathology (BIOP) focuses on plant immune responses and the influence of RNS and ROS on plants, with an emphasis on biochemical mechanisms of stimulus perception, signalling and indiction of defence genes. The Research Unit Environmental Simulation (EUS) at BIOP analyses the impact of environmental stresses (e.g. pollutants, UV-B, drought, temperature, etc. …) on plant-microbe/pathogen interactions focusing on the biological functions of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Using phemomics technologies and environmental simulation EUS and BIOP aims understanding the mechanisms of genotype specific plant-microbe interactions in a changing environment.

People involved:

  • Prof. Dr. Jörg Durner
  • Dr. Corina Vlot-Schuster
  • Prof. Dr. Jörg-Peter Schnitzler
  • Dr. Jana B. Winkler

Institute of Plant Genetics Polish Academy of Sciences

IPG PAS (www.igr.poznan.pl) is a center with a mission of research on crop and model plants, especiall in genetics, cytogenetics, genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and biotechnology. IPG PAS employs about 50 scientists and 25 PhD students. It is entitled to award PhD degree and habilitation in agricultural sciences (specialisation agronomy). The Institute was given the EC "HR Excellence in Research" logo in 2014. All tasks of the project will be done in the Department of Biometry and Bioinformatics (DBB) which is a unit specializing in statistical and bioinformatic methods. DBB employs currently 7 persons - mathematicians, informaticians and bioinformaticians. DBB has for many years collaborated with plant scientists in Poland and abroad and with breeding companies on application of statistics and quantitative genetics in plant research.

People involved:

  • Pawel Krajewski
  • Hanna ??wiek-Kupczy??ska

 

INRA Transfert

INRA Transfert is a fully-owned subsidiary of INRA founded in 2001 to exploit research results and innovative technologies, and develop them into concrete business opportunities. IT is a technology transfer company specialised in the field of innovating technologies arising from agriculture-related research. Its Europe Dept. was created to strengthening the participation of INRA in the European Research Area. IT helps INRA researchers and consortia members to set up projects in response to EC calls and to manage them once selected for EC granting. IT manages or has managed FP6, FP7 and H2020 research projects from very large to smaller ones: (i) Large CP: ANIMALCHANGE, DROPS, NovelTree and TriticeaeGenome, PURE; ii) infrastructures as NADIR, EXPEER, AQUAEXCEL; AQUAEXCEL2020, iii) integrated projects: BaSysBio; iv) networks of excellence: Evoltree, CoExtra and Endure and v) ERA-Net: JPI-FACCE and ANIHWA.

IT puts at the project disposal the expertise held by its Technology Transfer department in: i) Managing technology portfolios through analysing inventions and their environment, searching for industrial beneficiaries, negotiating terms and conditions of technology transfer and ii) Supporting development of innovative start-up companies by defining a business project around the know-how or patented technology to be transferred; determining IP related results to guarantee conditions for product commercialisation; organising the technology transfer to the innovation company

People involved:

  • Bénédicte Ferreira
  • Dr. Pamela Lucas
  • Yohan Lecuona

Magyar Tudomanyos Akademia Szegedibiologiai Kutatokozpont

The Biological Research Centre (BRC) was founded by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1971 and gained the prestigious European Center of Excellence status in 2000. It consists of four institutes (Biochemistry, Biophysics, Genetics, Plant Biology). The BRC presently has 450 employees (240 researchers), 66 PhD students from a variety of PhD schools. The Plant Biology Institute of BRC is active in research targeting the molecular mechanism of light perception and photosynthetic utilization of light, abiotic stress responses, such as drought, osmotic and UV stress, as well as cell cycle regulation. The Institute has also been active in plant phenotyping in the last 10 years. They have developed greenhouse based semi-automatic phenotyping platforms to monitor the development of shoots/leaves and roots under controlled stress conditions.

People involved:

  • Dr. Imre Vass
  • Prof. Dénes Dudits

Phenospex BV

Phenospex BV is a private company based in the Netherlands. Phenospex develops and manufactures sensors and software specially designed to assess plants in harsh environments and field conditions. Core expertise of Phenospex are 3D laser scanners, real-time analysis of 3D data coupled with plant biological expertise. Phenospex will be involved in JRA1.2 and provide consulting activities. Moreover, in JRA1.3 they will scan the calibration targets in their facilities and provide the datasets to the primary partners of this task and lastly they will be involved in JRA1.4 and will scan and analyse the plant material in their own facilities.

People involved:

  • Dr. Grégoire Hummel
  • Sejong Park
  • Alexander den Ouden

Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra

The Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra (SUA Nitra), as the only public agricultural university in Slovakia has an exclusive role in providing both the education and research in the field of agriculture and related research areas, such as: agrobiology, food resources, sustainable agriculture, agricultural production, biotechnology, food technology, agricultural engineering, operation of energy facilities on agricultural production, gardening and landscape design, agricultural economics and management, international trade in agricultural commodities, marketing, development of rural tourism, project management for rural development, etc. The SUA consists of 6 faculties including the Faculty of Agrobiology and Food Resources (FAFR), a recently established Research center AgroBioTech and other facilities. The Department of plant physiology, Faculty of Agrobiology and Food resources, SUA Nitra is focused on the impact of abiotic stress effect on crop productivity, mainly effect of drought and high temperature on primary processes of photosynthesis, biomass production and yielding, drought tolerance mechanisms based on molecular to whole plant level. It has developed for more than 20 years the infrastructure and methodology of the eco-physiological research in Slovakia and international relationships with many partners abroad. The department has also developed laboratory of ecology of photosynthesis, plant metabolism and molecular plant physiology offering gas exchange, biophysical optical methods incl. chlorophyll fluorescence, water status and dynamics, stress metabolites and enzymes as well as biomass production assessments methods to study the adaptation and acclimation processes within the photosynthetic apparatus and plant (crop) photosynthetic efficiency as affected by drought and high temperature. At presence the department has developed new laboratory for automated phenotyping crop traits for their tolerance to abiotic stresses with appropriate technical equipment (phenotyping platform in fully controlled environmental conditions).

People involved:

  • Prof. Marian Brestic
  • Dr. Marek Zivcak
  • Dr. Katarina Olsovska

Université Catholique De Louvain

The Université catholique de Louvain, founded in 1425, is a large institution dedicated to teaching, research and services. It covers most scientific disciplines in Art and Humanities, Sciences and Technology and Medical Sciences. Within the Earth and Life Institute (300 researchers), the Agronomy division brings together multidisciplinary expertise around the biological and socio-economic dimensions of agricultural production, farming systems and open environments. Emphasis is put on identifying the fundamental processes of how these systems function and evolve, from the level of the organism to that of populations. The Institute manages a modern greenhouse facility that hosts a root phenotyping platform which is part of the TA infrastructures of EPPN2020.

People involved:

  • Prof. Xavier Draye

University of Copenhagen

UCPH is the largest Scandinavian university (41,000 students, 9,000 employees) ranking 7th in Europe. The mission of the Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences is to stimulate the synergy between fundamental basic and applied research in biology and environmental science. The focus is on plants, microorganisms, animals and the environment as a basis for sustainable production of food, feed and biologicals. Research and teaching cover natural resources, agriculture, biotechnology and synthetic biology from the molecular level to the ecosystem scale. The distinctive and internationally recognized research contributes to solve the challenges that the global society is facing which is possible by covering the whole chain from molecular biology via biological production to environmental impacts. This includes the phenotyping of both model and crop plants, with state-of-the art infrastructures for high-throughput phenotyping under control conditions, to various approaches for root phenotyping under natural conditions and proximity and UAV based field phenotyping that are linked with physiological phenotyping to correlate non-invasive phenotypic data to crop physiology at abiotic and biotic stress.

People involved:

  • Prof Thomas Roitsch

University of Helsinki

The University of Helsinki (UHEL) is among the 100 best multidisciplinary research universities in the world. It has 4,500 researchers and teachers and 36,000 students at 4 campuses. The Viikki campus hosts both the Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences as well as the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry that together manage the Helsinki activities of the F-NaPPI. The Research Infrastructures are based on established core facilities for phenomics and metabolomics (Viikki Metabolomics Unit, ViMU).

People involved:

  • Docent Kristiina Himanen
  • Prof. Tapio Palva

The University Of Nottingham

The University of Nottingham is a higher education institution placed in the in the top 1% of Universities internationally by the latest (2015) QS World University Rankings. A research-driven University, Nottingham is ranked 8th in the UK on research power, and places particular emphasis on interdisciplinary research addressing real-world challenges. UNOTT’s work on plant phenotyping arises from the world-class research strengths of and well-established collaborations across four top rated schools (Biosciences, Computer Science, Mathematical Sciences and Engineering). UNOTT is a leader in the field of non-invasive technology for the analysis of plant structure and development in controlled and semi-controlled environments. The University’s Hounsfield Facility is a unique multidisciplinary initiative employing state of the art microCT (X-ray) technologies and innovative image analysis techniques to explore and quantify the internal architecture of biomaterials and support research into environmental sustainability and global food security.

People involved:

  • Prof Tony Pridmore
  • Prof Malcolm Bennett

Vlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie

VIB is a life-sciences research institute, based in Flanders, Belgium, that performs basic research with a strong focus on translating scientific results into pharmaceutical, agricultural and industrial applications. The VIB Department of Plant Systems Biology (PSB) is one of the world-leading centers for advanced plant sciences. Over the past 5-10 years, the department has invested significantly in the development of plant phenotyping systems to support its research activities.

People involved:

  • Professor Dirk Inzé
  • Dr. Nathalie Wuyts
  • Dr. Stijn Dhondt
  • Dr. Hilde Nelissen

VSN International

VSN International Ltd (VSNi) is an SME, formed in 2010 by Rothamsted Research (Harpenden UK) and the Numerical Algorithms Group (Oxford UK), to develop and commercialise their statistical IP. The technical team originated mainly from Rothamsted, and have considerable experience in the application and development of new statistical methodology for biological research. In addition, VSNi’s links with the Numerical Algorithms Group provide it with access to state-of-the-art computing algorithms. VSNi has formed long-term relationships with world-leading partners to develop and implement statistical methods essential for the analysis of phenotypic and genetic data. It has a thriving international user base serving over 100 countries.

People involved:

  • Professor Roger Payne
  • Dr Sue Welham

Wageningen University

The mission of Wageningen University (WU) is ‘To explore the potential of nature to improve the quality of life’. A staff of 6,500 and 10,000 students from over 100 countries work in the domain of healthy food and living environment for governments and the business community-at-large. Within WU, the Biometris group does statistical and mathematical research, and is responsible for education and support WU as well as to further private and public organizations active in life sciences. Statistical genetics and genomics is a major research theme for Biometris. Statistical methodology is developed and used to define proper experimental designs and to efficiently analyse various types of genetic, genomic and phenotypic data. Biometris specifically develops mixed model and Bayesian QTL and genomic prediction/selection technology for the simultaneous analysis of multiple populations, environments and traits. In EPPN2020, Biometris will lead the work package dedicated to JRA3: Design and analysis of phenotyping experiments across multiple platforms, scales of plant organization, traits and management conditions.

People involved

  • Prof Dr Fred van Eeuwijk,
  • Dr Marcos Malosett
  • Dr Willem Kruijer

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EPPN2020 has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 731013