Root Phenotyping Integrated Educational Doctoral Network

Project Information

ROOTED

Grant agreement ID: 101072588

DOI

10.3030/101072588

EC signature date 13 July 2022

Start date 1 January 2023

End date 31 December 2026

Funded under

• Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 2 740 521,60

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN, NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND, DUBLIN
Ireland

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ROOTED (Root Phenotyping Integrated Educational Doctoral Network)

Reporting period: 2023-01-01 to 2024-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Soil is a finite resource, but the land we currently grow on is significantly degraded in many regions of the world. There is no more land that can be reclaimed for agricultural production, therefore one of the major food challenges we face in the 21st Century is how to maximise the productivity of our land, while limiting negative environmental impact. A deeper understanding of the interactions between soils and plants and where they take up water and nutrients may support sustainable intensification of agricultural production. The challenge of ensuring food security provides the impetus for ROOTED (Root Phenotyping Integrated Educational Doctoral Network). ROOTED will consolidate the complimentary expertise of an international, interdisciplinary, multisectoral team to train a new generation of strong, resilient, flexible and creative scientists capable of innovating the fields of plant and soil sciences to actively contribute to the goal of doubling food production in a sustainable manner by 2050 to feed the growing world population.

Root systems make up approximately one half of most plants and perform several key functions, for example taking up sufficient water and nutrients and anchoring the plant into the ground to keep it upright. Yet, root systems are often forgotten about in crop breeding programmes and our knowledge about how they grow and function is limited, as soil is opaque, so they are hidden from view. Root phenotyping is the quantification of the collective expression of the genotype in conjunction with the environment on a plant's observable morphological, physiological and biochemical characteristics. Yet, humanity’s knowledge regarding root systems and how they capture resources in soils is crucial to improving precision agricultural technology.

The overarching research aim of ROOTED is to comprehensively determine the underlying constraints impeding optimum soil exploration by roots. To achieve our research goal, ROOTED is based upon the following Research Objectives:
Research Objective 1 (RO1): To develop a deeper understanding of the environmental constraints to root exploration in soil and determine the extent to which the biological interactions impact root phenotypes (WP1-2)
Research Objective 2 (RO2): To push our knowledge boundaries regarding root plasticity in relation to nutrient availability to enable better trait targets for breeding programmes (WP3).
Research Objective 3 (RO3): Compile an open image repository of varied root phenotypes and associated ground truth measurements (WP4).

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The project commenced on 1st January 2023 and implementation of the workplan got underway immediately; a project manager was recruited, the management structure was established, Consortium meetings were arranged, a process for Doctoral candidate (DC) recruitment was developed and 10 (DCs) were recruited, the Consortium Agreement was negotiated and signed by all parties, prefinancing payments were disbursed to beneficiaries, the kick off meeting was arranged, the external experts were nominated, the research study panels were established, personal career development and internal reporting templates were developed, the website and social media accounts were set up, the training plan was commenced with two of the six events delivered by UCD and FZJ, an initial data management plan was generated and DCs began to set up their experiments, write up their literature reviews and investigate the optimum timing of their secondments. Ten highly skilled excellent early-career researchers were recruited fulfilling the MSCA eligibility rules. A total of 9 countries and 4 continents are represented by the DCs associated with RootEd. The broader context of the training: ROOTED will help the EU community meet stated objectives, including enhancing its position as a world leader in science, especially in strategic areas such as environment, food security and agriculture. It will strengthen the scientific and technological base available to meet this challenge, as well as fostering collaboration in and between industry and academia. It will enhance the research mobility and career development for DCs; in particular, the comprehensive and bespoke 3-year training programme within ROOTED is designed to build their skills and competences, support lifelong training and development, plus ensure knowledge transfer and networking. The intersectoral potential of the ROOTED findings is greatest for agriculture, plant phenotyping, land management and biodiversity conservation. Deliverable and Milestones: All deliverables due in this period have been completed and submitted.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

A coordinated approach among plant phenotyping infrastructures is required for future sustainable agriculture. This is a key focus of bringing together the best plant phenotyping platforms across Europe into ROOTED. The innovation in ROOTED is to connect experts working on crop phenotypes with soil microbiologists to realise rhizosphere solutions to meet the research priorities of productive and sustainable agricultural systems. Through ROOTED these ambitions will be realised and the next generation of interdisciplinary plant and soil scientists will be trained. This fundamental new information will then be consolidated into best practice and advice to growers to ensure future food security.

Plant Phenotyping has been described as the bottleneck to food security, yet the real bottleneck to plant phenotyping is thought to be image analysis and processing. This situation further hampers the inclusion of machine learning into this field, which potentially could rapidly increase data analytics. ROOTED will push innovation in root science through the application of artificial intelligence to quantify images of root systems in soils obtained via non-invasive root imaging methods. The ROOTED consortium consolidates the complementary expertise, technologies (all beneficiaries can provide access to world-class plant phenotyping platforms and infrastructure) and long-term field sites of research-intensive academic and private organisations from 8 European countries.

Agriculture is increasingly using digital technologies, it is estimated that 9 out of 10 future jobs will require digital skills, but currently 44% of the European workforce do not have these basic skills. This is a severe skills gap that Europe needs to close urgently to avoid economic downturn. ROOTED graduates will have a level of digital skills mastery that enables them to move straight into employment in agri-food businesses, seed and breeding companies, advisory and scientific roles. We are on the cusp of the 2nd Green Revolution and urgently require highly-skilled doctoral candidates (DCs) to enter the workforce pipeline to meet the challenges of the 21st Century.

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