Digital Agriculture – a plant science perspective

Dr. Andrew Leakeyleakey@Illinois.edu@leakey77

CO2

H2O

Vertically integrated phenotyping for productivity & drought traitsMicroscopic Leaf

TraitsEpidermal cell

patterning

Leaf Tissue TraitsPhotosynthesis and

stomatal conductance

Leaf Tissue TraitsHyperspec for [N] and SLA

Canopy TraitsWater use

Canopy TraitsRadiation

interception & biomass production

Leaf Tissue TraitsWater potential &

leaf rolling

Root System TraitsSize and distribution

High-throughput stomatal patterning pipeline - Rapid data acquisition, automated counting of stomata and GWAS

Pattern recognition neural network. ~20,000 fields of view,

Tzi8

Oh43

M37W

Ki11

23°C

34°CVariation in canopy temperature across field of 900 sorghum varieties

Thermal imaging from cherry pickers, helicopters and drones to assess variation in water use among 100s of genotypes in the field

Low water use variety (warmer)

High water use variety (cooler)

Standard sorghum Water efficient sorghum

NSF Mid-scale infrastructure$20 million

• Bioinformatics• Biology• Computer Science• Cyberinfrastructure• Engineering/Robotics• Sensors/Imaging