While crop breeding efforts have greatly benefited from advances in genomics, profiling the plant phenome – mapping their structure and function – has the potential to transform our ability to ensure food security for a growing population facing climate change. Phenotyping methods have advanced significantly, but typically been developed piecemeal, within unrelated projects. The UK plant phenomics landscape is therefore fragmented, with specialist methods operated independently at geographically distinct locations. Data standards and representations vary, as does training and support for developers, facility managers and operators, and scientific users.

PhenomUK will transition from a Technology Touching Life network into a national research infrastructure, taking on the work of the previously termed “UKPCPI” Infrastructure scoping activity to ensure continuity in community identity. The PhenomUK Research Infrastructure will bring together and enhance the UK’s powerful but dispersed resources. This initiative mirrors and is closely related to international activities. Specifically, it seeks to produce a UK node of EMPHASIS, an EU ESFRI project aiming to create a pan-European plant and crop phenotyping infrastructure.