Our interdisciplinary team will:

Provide innovative pathways to identify and generate more versatile and efficiency-oriented crop production systems

Establish and improve novel time-lapse imaging procedures acting at different spatial and temporal scales

Apply visual, near-infrared and thermal imaging to quantify shoot and root architecture, dynamic and short-term growth processes, as well as photosynthesis, gas exchange and compound composition

Work on major and alternative crops alike in climate chambers, greenhouses and field sites These 'phenotyping approaches', together with other approaches from plant ecophysiology, breeding and molecular analysis, will

Help elucidate plant genotypes and crop production systems that are optimized to regionally differing ecological niches

Facilitate improved understanding of basic rules governing plant-environment-management interactions

Ameliorate the knowledge transfer between lab and field as well as between plant biology and agricultural sciences to improve the World Food System.

Advance precision farming, plant breeding and the application of plant genomics in the long run Teaching a new generation of students with a system-oriented view and expert knowledge on a wide spectrum of questions and methods is crucial to realize this vision.