By Dee Shore
NC State University’s Jing Zhang describes her entry into the field of plant phenomics as accidental, but the twists she encountered early on launched a career pioneering the future of agricultural science.
Zhang joined the university’s horticultural science faculty and its N.C. Plant Sciences Initiative three years ago, establishing the Translational Plant Phenomics Lab in the Plant Sciences Building on Centennial Campus.
Plant phenomics involves using high-tech automated tools to measure and analyze a plant’s observable traits — things like height, color, root structure, and response to stress.
Such information, Zhang says, holds the key to accelerating crop breeding and developing better crop management practices. With more data — coupled with faster, better tools to analyze it —scientists can gain greater insights into the complex interplay that occurs when plants with different genetics respond in different ways to similar environmental conditions.
Zhang was one of the first, if not the first, to employ plant phenomics in turfgrass science. That was back in the mid-2010s, when plant phenomics was emerging as a distinct field of study and she was a graduate student and postdoctoral researcher.
Source : ncsu.edu