Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 8410 / SEEDWORLD.COM JANUARY 2017 WHAT’S HAPPENING ON a one-acre plot in Arizona is on track to transform the world of plant science, ushering in a new era of advanced crop ana- lytics. The TERRA (Transportation Energy Resources from Renewable Agriculture) project seeks to develop improved varieties of energy sorghum for biofuel use while creating enhanced crop phenotyping methods. In the fall of 2015, the TERRA-REF team received an $8 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy for the collaborative effort between the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, University of Arizona, United States Department of Agriculture’s Arid Land Agricultural Research Center, University of Illinois, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Kansas State University and Washington University at St. Louis. “Our goal is to fundamentally transform breeding by making more information available about how plants grow,” says David LeBauer, a University of Illinois researcher who leads the TERRA-REF Computing Pipeline Development Team. “By measuring traits that improve yield potential and stress tolerance with high precision and frequency, we will have more power to dis- cover the underlying genes that will transform breeding.” The TERRA-REF team is creating a public data set for sorghum phenotypes by deploying a suite of modern sensors on a large field scanner in Arizona. The scan- ner covers one acre and is built into the ground. It carries a large number of heavy sensors and measures plants with unprecedented precision, LeBauer says. Those sensors include high resolution cameras that measure visible, ultraviolet and near-infrared wave- lengths, leaf and soil temperatures, and capture three- dimensional images of plant structure. A project of this scope has had its challenges. “We did not initially appreciate how much work would be required to operate a sensor suite every day at high precision,” LeBauer says. “Even though we are using commercial sensors, these sensors collect 100 to 1,000 times more data at higher frequency than drones or greenhouse phenotyping platforms.” Before the data could be processed, researchers had to create a pipeline that ferried that large amount of data from the field in Arizona to supercomputers in Illinois, and then develop the calibration and validation protocols required before analyses could begin. “Many of these challenges could not have been identified in advance, and reflect how ambitious it is to SORGHUM MICROSCOPE The TERRA project proves how collaboration can lead to great things. bring together experts from so many different fields of science and engineering,” he says. The project is in its initial preview data release, giving scientists, engineers and plant breeders a chance to pro- vide feedback on which data products are most useful and which formats are easiest to use. “We will revise these before the beta release in November 2017, and by November 2018, we will have a fully public reference data set,” LeBauer says. “At the time of public release, our pipeline will process the terabytes of data the field scanner can collect each day and make it available within two days of collection.” In addition to collecting reference data, research- ers are evaluating the tools to determine what’s most effective and how that technology can be used with equipment such as drones, robots and tractors. Although the project is ongoing, their work has already resulted in a farm-level product that can deliver many of the same data benefits to individual growers. PheNode is an in-field sensor suite with built-in envi- ronmental sensors and a phenotyping station. Eric Lyons, a University of Arizona assistant pro- fessor who leads the CyVerse project for advanced scientific computing, applauds the TERRA-REF group for what they’ve accomplished to date. “For a project of this scale that is just completing its first year of oper- ations, it is impressive to see how quickly they have started generating and distributing data,” he says. SW UNDER THE MARIA BROWN is a writer and news- paper reporter based in Michigan. She obtained a bachelor’s degree in English from Calvin College and lends a hand on her family’s 800-acre farm in Capac. Researchers like Todd Mockler of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center are part of a new research program to unleash the potential of energy sorghum.