The Frederick Research Center (FRC) is advancing in the development of software and technological tools for effective plant evaluation, contributing to mitigating the impacts of climate change on Cypriot agriculture.

According to a press release, these tools are being developed as part of the Phenotypos research project. Two FRC research teams are spearheading this initiative: the Mobile Devices Laboratory (MDL), coordinated by Dr. Andreas Konstantinidis, and the Computational Intelligence Research Lab (COIN), led by Dr. Charis Papadopoulos.

Phenotypos, orchestrated by the University of Cyprus, secured funding of €2.2 million from the Research and Innovation Foundation under a call for Strategic Research Infrastructures.

The project aims to establish a state-of-the-art infrastructure in Cyprus for plant phenotyping - the evaluation of their characteristics and performance under varying conditions. Collaborators on this project include the University of Cyprus, the Ministry of Agriculture, Rural Development and Environment, Frederick Research Center, the Cyprus University of Technology, Atlantis Environment and Innovation company, Alion company, and the CY.R.I.C Research and Innovation Center.

Dr. Charis Papadopoulos, head researcher of COIN and Assistant Professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering, Electronic Computer Engineering, and Informatics at Frederick University, stated, "For the implementation of Phenotypos, COIN will be responsible for designing and developing machine learning and computer vision techniques. Specifically, the developed techniques will extract appropriate features from plant images, which will then be used in combination with a large volume of high-throughput sensor data to predict plant growth under extreme conditions, ensuring the accuracy of these predictions."

Dr. Andreas Konstantinidis, head researcher of MDL and Associate Professor at the same department of Frederick University, explained that "MDL will develop the main software infrastructure which will connect various systems, collect, store and manage the large volume of data from sensors and an autonomous ground vehicle, offer data visualization and analysis, statistical analyses, advanced image data processing and labeling tools, and will host the machine learning techniques."

It is noted that creating a strategic plant phenotyping infrastructure in Cyprus will enable effective evaluation of cultivated species varieties/genotypes adapted to local environmental conditions. Moreover, it will aid in genetic improvement and selection of optimal varieties/genotypes, accelerate research and development in plant and environmental sciences, and serve as a platform for developing smart agricultural technology.

The Phenotypos project is co-financed by the Republic of Cyprus and the European Union's European Regional Development Fund.