Phenomics and Environomics: A Spatial Temporal Envelope for Crop Studies.

The growth and development of plants is incremental and cumulative with the physiological status of the plant at each moment in time and is a reflection of its history up to that point. Season path to yield is the accumulated product of plant metabolism over the course of many days, some optimal some not. The environment varies continuously and alters plant performance over time. Genotypic variation in the plant response to an environment provides the basis for efforts to better match genotypes and environments.The phenotype of a plant within an environment is essential information for understanding geno:enviro matching.The complexity of geno:enviro matching is related to the fact that, while there may be only a few thousand genotypes to screen, the number of possible environmental patterns is potentially large. 

Leaf-level to field-level phenotypic measurements can span a spatial range from 0.1 m² to10,000 m² (1 hectare). Over the course of a growing season phenotypic measurements can be collected on a timescale ranging from 15 min to 150 days. These spatial and temporal ranges define a spatial:temporal envelope for phenotyping that can provide a basis for assessing the utility and limits of a proposed high-throughput phenotyping approach.

In this presentation we will discuss the utility of a spatial:temporal envelope relative to a number of phenotypic measurements including; soil moisture, canopy temperature, gas exchange (leaf and canopy), gene expression, metabolites, and plant growth and development. The advantages and disadvantages of various sensor platforms will be discussed as well.