GCR: Accelerating Progress Toward Intrinsic Genetic Solutions to Sustainable Agricultural Intensification

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This Growing Convergence Research project aims at crop improvements through deep integration across life sciences (plant biology, agronomy, genetics), physical sciences (engineering), and computational sciences. Specific goals are to develop tools and apply methods that capitalize on advances in these respective fields to provide acceleration of crop improvement progress -- an outcome of worldwide importance.The proposers seek to build on their early progress in measurement of plant architecture, increasing scale to accommodate large populations, accelerating data processing and enhancing scientific visualization to efficiently pair imagery with rich information provided by post-processing algorithms. Further, it is important to go beyond quantification of growth trajectories and link these to measurements of crop yield, to reveal subsets of measurements that are accurate proxies for yield, and DNA markers that are diagnostic of salient genes. This multidisciplinary project is closely tied to the education of students and the public at many levels. The researchers will build on their long and positive involvement with talented members of underrepresented groups.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.