Phenomics

"Phenomics" is an emerging area of research whose aspiration is the systematic measurement of the physical, physiological and biochemical traits (the phenome) belonging to a given individual or collection of individuals. Non-destructive or minimally invasive techniques allow repeated measurements across time to follow phenotypes as a function of developmental time. These longitudinal traits promise new insights into the ways in which crops respond to their environment including how they are managed. To maximize the benefit, these approaches should ideally be scalable so that large populations in multiple environments can be sampled repeatedly at reasonable cost. Thus, the development and validation of non-contact sensing technologies remains an area of intensive activity that ranges from Remote Sensing of crops within the landscape to high resolution at the subcellular level. Integration of this potentially highly dimensional data and linking it with variation at the genetic level is an ongoing challenge that promises to release the potential of both established and under-exploited crops.

As our ability to acquire massive amounts of information about genome variation accelerates it is becoming increasingly clear that to make maximum use of this information we also need well-structured, systematic data on the phenotypic consequences of genomic changes. Phenomics is the new discipline of using standardized measurement techniques to ch

This book represents a pioneer initiative to describe the new technologies available for next-generation phenotyping and applied to plant breeding. Over the last several years plant breeding has experienced a true revolution. Phenomics, i.e., high-throughput phenotyping using automation, robotics and remote data collection, is changing the way cultivars are developed. Written in an easy to understand style, this book offers an indispensable reference work for all students, instructors and scientists who are interested in the latest innovative technologies applied to plant breeding.

As a consequence of the global climate change, both the reduction on yield potential and the available surface area of cultivated species will compromise the production of food needed for a constant growing population. There is consensus about the significant gap between world food consumption projected for the coming decades and the expected crop yield-improvements, which are estimated to be insufficient to meet the demand. The complexity of this scenario will challenge breeders to develop cultivars that are better adapted to adverse environmental conditions, therefore incorporating a new set of morpho-physiological and physico-chemical traits; a large number of these traits have been found to be linked to heat and drought tolerance. Currently, the only reasonable way to satisfy all these demands is through acquisition of high-dimensional phenotypic data (high-throughput phenotyping), allowing researchers with a holistic comprehension of plant responses, or ‘Phenomics’. Phenomics is still under development. This Research Topic aims to be a contribution to the progress of methodologies and analysis to help understand the performance of a genotype in a given environment.

Genetics, Genomics and Fish Phenomics provides the latest information on the rapidly evolving field of genetics, presenting new medical breakthroughs that are occurring as a result of advances in our knowledge of genetics. The book continually publishes important reviews of the broadest interest to geneticists and their colleagues in affiliated disciplines, critically analyzing future directions, with hhis volume focusing on genetics, genomics, and phenomics of fish. Includes a critical analysis of future directions for the study of clinical genetics Written and edited by recognized leaders in the field Presents new medical breakthroughs that are occurring as a result of advances in our knowledge of genetics

Identification of desirable genotypes with traits of interest is discernible for making genetic improvement of crop plants. In this direction, screening of a large number of germplasm for desirable traits and transfer of identified traits into agronomic backgrounds through recombination breeding is the common breeding approach. Although visual screening is easier for qualitative traits, its use is not much effective for quantitative traits and also for those, which are difficult to score visually. Therefore, it is imperative to phenotype the germplasm accessions and breeding materials precisely using high throughput phenomics tools for challenging and complex traits under natural, controlled and harsh environmental conditions. Realizing the importance of phenotyping data towards identification and utilization of a germplasm as donors, global scientific community has exerted increased focus on advancing phenomics in crop plants leading to development of a number of techniques and methodologies for screening of agronomic, physiological, and biochemical traits. These technologies have now become much advanced and entered the era of digital science. This book provides exhaustive information on various aspects related to phenotyping of crop plants and offers a most comprehensive reference on the developments made in traditional and high throughput phenotyping of agricultural crops.

In the age of digitization our society is transformed into a new state. In particular, machine intelligence dramatically elevates our capability to create and digest information. Naturally, healthcare is also impacted by this trend and will even be more transformed into a informatic driven discipline in the future. In the most important area of histo-pathology, the interpretation of tissue slices from cancer patients, informatics will have an early and huge impact on treatment decisions and probably will act as the leading discipline for this transformation in medicine. Tissue Phenomics provides a comprehensive methodology aiming at the discovery of the most accurate tissue-based decision support algorithm by close integration of assay development, image analysis and bioinformatics, and optimization feedback loops. In this book the methodology of Tissue Phenomics and its benefits and wealth’s are described. The different components of Tissue Phenomics are explained in the different chapters. In the chapters 2 to 4 of this book different authors describe various approaches on how to convert the wealth of tissue slide pixel data into mineable information using knowledge-based and data-driven image analysis methods. Subsequently, the datafication of images and the bioinformatics part plays a crucial role in generating prognostic and predictive models for disease progression. The integration of other data sources such as genomics, radiomics and patient related information is also important and is described as well. As discussed in chapters 5 and 6, these models may classify patients in distinct groups such as those responding to a given therapy. Since Tissue Phenomics provides a huge set of potentially prognostic features (phenes), one focus of both chapters is robust feature selection methods by advanced Monte-Carlo cross validation algorithms. In chapter 7 we discuss multiple application examples of Tissue Phenomics in academic and commercial settings and its tremendous impact to advances in biomedical sciences. Building on the successes in research, chapters 8 and 9 discuss applications in clinical environments and provide a flavor to the future envision in chapter 10, where tissue datafication and subsequent patient profiling is part of every routine examination, with the goal to best match patients with the most successful therapy, as predicted by tissue phenes.

As a consequence of the global climate change, both the reduction on yield potential and the available surface area of cultivated species will compromise the production of food needed for a constant growing population. There is consensus about the significant gap between world food consumption projected for the coming decades and the expected crop yield-improvements, which are estimated to be insufficient to meet the demand. The complexity of this scenario will challenge breeders to develop cultivars that are better adapted to adverse environmental conditions, therefore incorporating a new set of morpho-physiological and physico-chemical traits; a large number of these traits have been found to be linked to heat and drought tolerance. Currently, the only reasonable way to satisfy all these demands is through acquisition of high-dimensional phenotypic data (high-throughput phenotyping), allowing researchers with a holistic comprehension of plant responses, or 'Phenomics'. Phenomics is still under development. This Research Topic aims to be a contribution to the progress of methodologies and analysis to help understand the performance of a genotype in a given environment.