Location: Weed and Insect Biology Research
Project Number: 3060-21220-033-026-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Sep 1, 2023
End Date: Aug 30, 2025
Objective:
Developing systems to expedite phenotyping of biotic and abiotic stress tolerance in Brassica oilseed and small grain cereal crops.
Approach:
Utilize equipment resources and expertise provided by the Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering to perfect robotic systems for collecting multispectral imagery, plant physiological parameters, and plant-plant, and plant-soil interactions for cover-crop and dual-cropping system including canola, camelina, winter barley, intermediate wheat, and kernza before and after stress from the field and greenhouse.
1) Develop robotic high throughput methods to investigate and digitize physiological crop growth and soil parameters in cover-crop and dual-cropping systems under field and greenhouse/growth chamber conditions.
2) Grow canola, camelina, winter barley, intermediate wheat, and kernzia genotypes that differ in freezing tolerance and flowering time in the greenhouse and develop robotic systems needed to efficiently collect multispectral images, soil parameters, and physiological changes at 21 days after planting, 6 weeks after vernalization, and above and below ground tissues immediately prior to and after freezing and after three days of recovery.
3) Develop systematic and robotic high throughput methods to investigate physiological crop growth and soil parameters associated with survival of canola grown in pots in the field and after returning the pots to the greenhouse at five time points (Dec 1, Feb 1, Mar 1, April 1, and May 1).
