Arran Frood
Science Writer & Film Maker
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, Swindon, UK
Blink and the
future has arrived. Many modern inventions, from huge and mighty stealth
bombers to electric-hybrid vehicles and touchscreen smartphones seem to arrive
in an instant. But their presence defines where we are now and where we may be going.
The same could
be said of the new multi-million pound National Plant Phenomics Centre (NPPC),
the technological scale and capability of which provokes a similar “wow!”
factor. ‘Phenomics’ is the large-scale study of physical characteristics and the
NPPC is unique within the UK. It is the future of agricultural and
horticultural science, where thousands of plant traits are automatically
measured on a cyber-industrial scale and recorded digitally: a true monument to
the information age.
@arranfrood on twitter
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Scientists will
use the centre to ask questions about plant characteristics – everything from growth
rate to water use to formation useful metabolites – and how these physical
parameters are affected by genes, the environment and the interplay between the
two. The answers will feedback into twenty-first century food security
challenges and the need for better, more efficient biofuels among other
projects.
“The National
Plant Phenomics Centre provides a step change in the way plant biology is
implemented,” says Professor John Doonan, Director of the NPPC. “The high
throughput part allows whole populations of plants, such as breeding
populations, mapping experiments, natural diversity collections, and mutant
collections, to be analysed in parallel and under multiple defined
environments.”
The NPPC is a part of the Institute of Biological,Environmental and Rural Sciences (IBERS), which receives strategic funding from
the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), and is
based at Aberystwyth University. It’s an important part of the campus’ future,
because the NPPC is a National Capability, meaning it has special status as a
research hub for collaboration between scientists across many disciplines for
years to come
.
.
Data relay
Plants are used
for more than just food. They provide clothing, lubricant oils, medicinal
ingredients, ropes and twine, paper, logs for heating, and biofuels too.
Improving plants, however, still comes down to measuring physical aspects of
the organism: height, growth rate, number of flowers, leaf shape. But until
now, collecting this vast array of information has mostly been done by hand or
automated only on a small scale. “Instead of plant characteristics being
analysed piece-meal – one student, one trait – an increasingly wide range of traits
can be measured automatically, objectively, and simultaneously,” says Doonan.
To collect such a
wealth of data, the NPPC has an extensive 750m2 floor space the size
of three tennis courts. It’s been designed
for ‘medium’-sized plants such as the small grain cereals (wheat, barley, oats)
and oilseed rape but can also handle smaller forage grasses and larger plants
like maize and Miscanthus. What’s
special are the automated imaging chambers that can record in everything from
infra-red to ultra-violet light to obtain information on the physiology of
plants, such as organ temperature, water content and photosynthetic activity,
as well as their shape and size.
This large scale
multiplicity of 880 carriages (for up to 3400 plants on over 300m of conveyor)
and five imaging chambers working simultaneously allows a wide range of
questions to be asked, and answered, more quickly and objectively. For example,
where are controlling genes and alleles for drought tolerance, resistance to
biotic and abiotic stress, enhanced "yield" and improved nutrient use
efficiency?
Identification of useful alleles
By facilitating
breeding and gene identification, the production of improved varieties of plants
will be accelerated. New varieties take between 7 and 15 years, or more, of
conventional breeding before they are commercially available. “If we can remove
one or two years from the process, then we will make a significant difference,”
says Doonan. A key part of the NPPC’s work will be the identification of useful
alleles [gene variants] or more likely combinations of alleles, that produce
desirable physical traits, or phenotypes as they are known.
Measuring up
This new activity
in phenomics has been driven by the incredible advances seen in genomics over
the past decade. Defining the genetic characteristics of an organism by DNA
sequencing at the molecular level has gone from years and millions of dollars
to just a few hours and hundreds. But plant and animal features cannot be characterised
at the organismal level in the same way. “The NPPC presents a means to remedy
this discrepancy by integrating automated plant handling and environmental
control with computer vision and machine-learning approaches,” says Doonan.
Doonan adds that
one of the aims of the NPPC is to establish standards for objective phenotyping
in plant biology, which has often been subjective, while associated
environmental metadata can be inaccurate, incomplete or lacking. The controlled
environment of the NPPC can counter this. “Since phenotype can be strongly
influenced by the environment, it is really important that the environment is
documented really thoroughly,” he says. “The NPPC is actively involved in
international efforts to establish commonly accepted standards that will
enhance the value of phenotypic data, whether it is collected by automated
large scale centres or individual investigators.”
Impact across the world
Agreeing phenotyping
standards with scientists across the world could further increase the analytical
power of similar centres, which are rare but growing in number. The NPPC is unique
to the UK, but several facilities exist overseas and in the private plant
biotech sector. “The horticultural industry, particularly in Holland, has
realised the potential of automation combined with objective phenotyping for streamlining
commercial production,” says Doonan.
Academics are waking up towards the potentialof phenomics
in plant science research and there are now a handful of such facilities,
mainly in research institutes in Germany and France, with one at the University
of Adelaide in Australia.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Arran Frood, Science Writer and Film Maker is associated with Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), Polaris House
North Star Avenue
Swindon, SN2 1UH, UK.@arranfrood on twitter
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment
Your Comments.