Plant Phenotyping Workshop

ARPA-E held a workshop on "Plant Phenotyping" from Wednesday, June 18 to Thursday, June 19 at the Doubletree by Hilton Chicago O’Hare.

This workshop convened leaders from distinct science and engineering communities to develop new ideas and identify potentially transformational R&D approaches in the bioenergy market. These approaches will facilitate the generation of bioenergy crops with significantly improved yields and improve the overall energy usage in production agriculture. The workshop focused on both robotic platforms for in-field sensing and analytic tools for managing the large amounts of data that will be generated.

Specific intents of the workshop included:

The identification of specific technical and economic barriers to the implementation of these concepts and what opportunities exist to address them under the ARPA-E mission
The establishment of realistic timeframes and technical goals necessary to develop these technologies
The stimulation of interactions among workshop participants from a very diverse set of technical disciplines

Approximately 50-60 experts from academia, national/federal labs, and industry participated. Information gained from the workshop will assist ARPA-E leadership in the development of potential programs and funding opportunities which target key technological roadblocks relevant to the ARPA-E mission. Proceedings from the meeting are summarized below.

Agenda: Wednesday, June 18th – Thursday, June 19th

Day 1: Morning Session

Welcome & Opening Remarks

Eric Rohlfing (ARPA-E)

Crop Physiology

Carl Bernacchi (UIUC)

Breeding Technologies

Bill Rooney (TAMU)

Jesse Poland (KSU)

Genomic and Bioinformatic Technologies

Jeremy Schmutz (JGI) & Todd Mockler (Danforth Center)

Remote Sensing Technologies