Once again the REAP Start-up Showcase has shown to identify future leaders. Gardin is developing a low-cost optical phenotyping sensor that will give a real-time indication of plant health and predictions of ripening, nutritional content and yield. The company has just raised $10.8 million.
A backpack LiDAR device was used to overcome limitations in mobility and scalability possessed by other phenotyping platforms.
Prof Ji Zhou, Head of Data Sciences at NIAB has used LiDAR to provide large-scale 3D crop phenotyping in the field, overcoming one of the major bottlenecks in plant breeding.
Plant phenotyping is an emerging science that links the structure and appearance of a plant, its phenotype, with its underlying genomics. Analysing the phenotype is therefore important for research so, to determine the success of breeding, a new system from Analytik combines machine-learning with sensors to provide a rapid digital analysis of phenotyping traits.