Are Physiology and Phenomics Going to be Phruitful for Breeding.

Investment in phenomics technologies is rapidly increasing - even some ex-molecular biologists are getting on the bandwagon. The capabilities of these technologies can be impressive, but how do we ensure that this research becomes more than a stamp-collecting exercise. Breeders need to balance resources across their programs and had major challenges in working out how to deploy molecular marker technology to accelerate gain. Statistical and logistical short-cuts (e.g. using pedigree info etc) have helped with this. What kinds of 'short-cuts' can we make in phenomics? For example, our experiences with ground and aerial vehicle phenotyping, mainly in wheat and sorghum, have indicated that we can take some short-cuts in data processing and by using 'in-field' calibration to gain precision that is hard to achieve by relying on better but expensive (in time and cost) methods. Estimating crop height is one example - how can you use UAVs to match the moderate precision required for this trait without taking days to geo-position and process the data. Extracting key adaptation traits using phenomics and using this information to drive crop simulation models can also be used to derive or compute traits that are difficult to measure. This paper explosres some of the ways that we can 'add biological value' to raw phenomics data.