EMPHASIS on plant phenomics

EMPHASIS aims to promote future food security and agricultural business in a changing climate by addressing the technological and organisational limitations of European plant phenotyping. Youtube video “Why do we need EMPHASIS”.

The European Strategy Forum for Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) has identified “Plant Phenotyping” as a priority for the European research area, and EMPHASIS has been listed on the ESFRI Roadmap 2016 for Research Infrastructures. Since then, EMPHASIS has concluded its preparatory phase in 2021 and started implementation. Therein, ministry and scientific representatives from eleven countries discuss and decide on the strategic aspects of EMPHASIS operation as part of the EMPHASIS Interim General Assembly. In parallel, EMPHASIS runs pilot services intended to lead to the full EMPHASIS service portfolio once being operational.

About the EMPHASIS pilot services:

• EMPHASIS facilitates standardized and interoperable plant phenotyping in multi-environment field experiments through different field phenotyping services.
• EMPHASIS coordinates and support various training activities in plant phenotyping.
• EMPHASIS helps users to bridge the gaps towards a local information system following FAIR principles (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable), so their datasets can be used by a large scientific community.
• EMPHASIS works closely with the plant phenotyping community to develop Good Phenotyping Practices that will ensure experimental reproducibility and reusability of data.
• EMPHASIS aims to drive innovation in plant phenotyping technologies to ensure long-term sustainable excellence.
• The modelling online portal offers image analysis software tools, image data sets and plant models.
• The EMPHASIS Infrastructure Map provides an overview of plant phenotyping installations across Europe.

About our joint cluster projects with partners from the RI landscape:

• Life-Science RIs: EMPHASIS is partner in the Life-Science-RI community with  13 research infrastructure from biomedical research area aiming at the  development of synergies to provide access to  cutting-edge biomedical research infrastructures
• ENVRIcommunity: EMPHASIS is partner of the environmental RI community with 26 environmental and earth system research  infrastructures aiming at developing integrated solutions to create a more coherent, interdisciplinary and interoperable cluster of Environmental Research Infrastructures across Europe
• EOSC-Life: Together with 13 other ESFRI projects from the "Health and Food" sector, EMPHASIS is developing a digital platform for cooperation across disciplinary boundaries in order to make data available and usable in accordance with FAIR principles
• ENRIITC: EMPHASIS is associate partner of the ENRIITC project that supports the establishment of strategic, cross-border partnerships between industry and research infrastructures
• AgroServ: EMPHASIS provides integrated services towards agroecology together with more than 70 partners in Europe
• AI4Life: EMPHASIS helps to build competences on Artificial Intelligence in the Life Science community by outreach and training events and by dissemination towards its wide-spread user communities
• CROPINNO: EMPHASIS provides knowledge and experience on research infrastructure management to a key scientific institution on climate-smart crop production in the Western Balkans, the Institute of Field and Vegetable Crops, Novi Sad (IFVCNS)

• User testimonials of access to plant phenotyping facilities
• Deliverables from EMPHASIS preparatory project