7
The major
activities under each Objective
Objective |
Activity |
1.
Establishment
of a medium capacity high precision Plant Phenomics Facility and standardization of operation |
i)
Procurement
and installation of equipments, and development of automated medium
throughput and high precision phenomics facility on turn-key basis at NRCPB,
New Delhi to gain hands-on experience required for further expansion in
number, capacity, serving facilities and crops |
ii)
Establishment
of high-volume and low-precision phenotyping facilities like rain-out
shelters and environment-controlled green houses to evaluate germplasm and select
the feeder material for high precision facility |
|
iii)
Standardization
of operations for growing rice plants under controlled environmental
conditions, and imaging platforms for non-destructive precision phenotyping
using known contrasts |
|
iv)
Development of techniques for analysis of fluorescence, bioluminescence, thermal and hyperspectral reflectance images, and development of
multi-modal image processing techniques |
|
v)
Correlation
of morpho-physiological traits with multi-modal
spectral images under varying levels of stresses to identify parameters for
high-precision phenotyping of rice for soil moisture deficit and low temperature stress
tolerance |
|
2.
Precision
phenotyping of a contrasting set of rice germplasm for soil moisture deficit
and low temperature stress tolerance and creation of phenome database |
i)
Characterization
of the available core germplasm for morpho-physiological
traits in rain-out shelters and environment controlled green houses under
varying stress levels and identification
of reference germplasm sets |
ii)
Non-destructive
precision phenotyping of reference
germplasm sets using the imaging platforms and creation of phenome database |
|
iii)
Analysis
of the spectrum of phenotypic variation in the chosen traits, establishing
marker-trait association and adding value to the germplasm |
|
iv)
Development of machine learning
based pattern recognition techniques and predictive models for phenome
expression |
|
v)
Phenotyping
of insertion mutants of rice and Arabidopsis to discover new genes and
dissect pathways influencing soil
moisture deficit and low temperature stress tolerance phenome |
|
3.
Identification
of the role of candidate genes in soil
moisture deficit and low temperature stress tolerance through precision
phenomics of transgenics |
i)
Selection
of candidate genes from the public database and from those identified in the
NAIP project on “Bioprospecting
of genes and allele mining for abiotic stress
tolerance” and generation of constructs for their over-expression and
down-regulation |
ii)
Development
of transgenic rice and Arabidopsis and their precision phenotyping to determine the role of the candidate
genes in stress tolerance |
|
iii)
Identification
of useful genes and transgenics for possible
commercialization |
|
4.
Human
resource development in the area of Plant Phenomics |
i)
Research
level: Skill development of the project-associated scientist in the area of
high throughput phenomics through international trainings |
ii)
User/operational
level: Imparting training to the National Stake Holders including project
partners in the use of phenomic facility and
non-destructive imaging technologies for germplasm evaluation, understanding
stress tolerance and gene discovery |