The James Hutton Institute has received a £3 million investment from Scottish Enterprise for its new high-throughput phenotyping facility, part of the Advanced Plant Growth Centre (APGC), housed in its Crop Innovation Centre.

Using sensors and lasers to map, the facility will allow researchers to assess a plant’s architecture and health, and investigate how this is then influenced by genetic make-up and changes in the environment. 

It is hoped that by discovering new traits more quickly, the JHI’s new facility will provide a faster route to market for plant breeders serving the agriculture, horticulture, pharmaceutical and food and drink sectors.

The plant phenotyping platform is designed to create controlled climate conditions that crops will experience in the future. It integrates automated plant handling, irrigation and climate control, together with advanced imaging technologies to screen large populations of plants and select those best suited to the future climate conditions.

The technology allows researchers to replicate and predict global crop production conditions, helping to accelerate the breeding of climate-resilient and low-input crops that may be vital sources of food and medicine in future, building APGC research on the issues facing global food, non-food and pharmaceutical crops.

The facility is part of a suite combining advanced phenotyping, AI-driven analytics, and a high-performance computing cluster to support research and industry collaboration.  

As an open platform, the JHI said it will enable national and international collaboration to attract projects that cross academia and industry, and ensure a whole sector approach to a more sustainable future for agriculture.

“This new facility accelerates the identification of key traits for crop resilience, yield improvement and stress tolerance, climate change adaptation, sustainable agriculture and precision farming,” said Dr Rob Hancock, deputy director of the Advanced Plant Growth Centre.

“By leveraging Hutton expertise in genetics, we will enhance industry collaboration to bring the new varieties needed to support agriculture more quickly. Moreover, the facility directly supports new developments in controlled environment agriculture and vertical farming.”

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Scottish Enterprise’s investment comes in addition to the £62 million invested through the Tay Cities Region Deal by the UK and Scottish Governments, which funded two innovation centres, the APGC and the International Barley Hub (IBH), both created in partnership with the University of Dundee Plant Sciences Division.

“The new phenotyping equipment, supported by Scottish Enterprise, builds on existing facilities at The James Hutton Institute, including the International Barley Hub and the Advanced Plant Growth Centre,” said Adrian Gillespie, Scottish Enterprise chief executive.

“The cutting-edge facilities in Invergowrie combine innovative technology for the industrial biotechnology and agricultural sectors and will help create hundreds of new jobs, boost productivity and support scale-ups to benefit the Scottish economy.”