Digital In-Field Phenotyping Vehicle
Term: 1 year, beginning in 2020
Status: Ongoing
Researcher: Andrew Sharpe (Global Institute for Food Security/University of Saskatchewan)
SaskCanola Investment: $100,000
Total Project Cost: $700,000
Funding Partners: WGRF, SWDC, Global Institute for Food Security
Objective
Purchase major infrastructure – CropTraits Inc “Field Explorer” digital imaging and phenotyping platform.
This will accelerate the breeding of improved canola varieties as breeders from academia, government and industry use this service to phenotype larger breeding programs. This builds research capacity at GIFS, and will provide a useful phenotyping platform that will be utilized in future research proposals. This automated capacity will reduce the labour component of future phenotyping research, which is the main bottleneck for omics research and breeding at this time. Large-scale breeding platforms will allow Canadian breeding programs to remain competitive with other countries that are beginning to use these technologies.