The James Hutton Institute has received a £3m investment from Scottish Enterprise for its new high throughput phenotyping facility that’s part of the Advanced Plant Growth Centre (APGC) in Invergowrie, Scotland.
The facility is part of a suite combining advanced phenotyping, automation, AI-driven analytics and a high-performance computing cluster that supports research and industry collaboration.
The plant phenotyping platform is designed to create the controlled climate conditions that crops will experience in the future. It works by integrating automated plant handling, irrigation and climate control with advanced imaging technologies to screen large populations of plants and select those best suited to the future climate conditions.
The suite has four climate-controlled growth rooms that can be programmed individually to reach temperatures ranging from +5°C to +40°C. The humidity can be set from 30% to 95% and lighting is provided by a sunlike LED system.
As an open platform, 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,” says Dr Rob Hancock, deputy director of the APGC.
“By leveraging Hutton expertise in genetics, we will enhance industry collaboration to bring the new varieties needed to support agriculture more quickly. The facility directly supports new developments in controlled environment agriculture and vertical farming.”
The platform will also enable researchers to accelerate the breeding and growing of climate resilient and low input crops and enhance the APGC’s research on the issues facing global food, non-food and pharmaceutical crops.
“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 scaleups to benefit the Scottish economy,” says Adrian Gillespie, chief executive at Scottish Enterprise.
“Our support will enable more businesses to use the facilities to translate world class research into commercial ventures with the potential to scale.”
Over the next ten years, the Crop Innovation Centre – of which APGC is part of – is projected to contribute to over 900 collaborative industry projects supporting an additional 2,600 jobs in the UK, of which 1,760 will be in Scotland and 470 in Tayside.
It has been estimated that it will contribute over £900m GVA to the UK economy – over half of which will be in Scotland.