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High throughput phenotyping is a technological lock to be lifted to allow the selection of varieties that consume less inputs (water, nitrogen or pesticides) in the context of competitive and more environmentally friendly agriculture.
 
 
In this context, PHENOME aims to federate a network of phenotyping platforms already existing or under development at five sites in France. The network will serve French and European research and will also be open to private partners (seed companies, technical institutes, etc.).

This 8-year project associates INRA (in particular the BIA unit through the PhenoChem platform), Arvalis-Institut-du-Végétal and Cetiom. A strong investment in the development of sensors and data analysis methods will also be pursued.

Phenome includes the following infrastructures:

• PhenoArch (Montpellier) and PPHD (High-Speed Phenotyping Platform - Dijon): two platforms under controlled conditions (capacity of 1900 plants) with manipulations of soil water status, temperature and CO2, and measurements of plant growth, architecture and transpiration.
• Five platforms in the fields (Ouzouer-le-Marché, Dijon, Clermont-Ferrand, Toulouse, Montpellier): two semi-controlled platforms, one with a FACE (Free-Air Carbon Enrichment) system and modules capable of controlling rain (capacity of 800 microparcels).

They are equipped with soil and climate sensors, and robots that can image stands with several wavelengths. Three platforms in the field have a higher flow rate than the previous ones (2000 micro parcels). They are equipped with soil and climate sensors, as well as a phenomenobile, an autonomous vehicle equipped with sensors capable of generating functional images at the micro plot scale.

• Two omics platforms, Phenochem (Nantes) and Hit-Me (Bordeaux), which allow centralizing and optimizing metabolic and structural measurements at the project level.

This project, coordinated by INRA, has obtained 24 M€ from the Investments of the Future. The project was launched on April 11th, 2013.