Amazing all the technologies it brings together to create a new strain of the humble staple…
The CropDesign website describes it as “The TraitMill™ comprises proprietary bioinformatics tools, high throughput gene engineering systems, efficient methods for plant transformation, and a unique set up for automated high resolution phenotypic evaluation of crop performance.”
Wired magazine translates that into more understandable terms as “the robo-nursery (that) performs artificial selection with unprecedented precision and speed.”
Part of BASF, the chemical giant the CropDesign greenhouse in Ghent, Belgium uses robots, conveyor belts, RFID chips, high-resolution cameras, software algorithms – to find the best rice seedlings.
A few hundred miles away in Berlin, Germany another BASF company, Metanomics studies the changes that occur when an individual gene in a plant’s genetic code is modified. Says Gourmet
“With software developed in-house, Metanomics’ 70 or so computers are able to measure several hundred metabolites at a time. The results get combined with those from CropDesign’s phenotypic screening, and that information, along with whatever’s been learned from hundreds of field trials, gets integrated into a “bio-informatics platform” known as the “MetaMap.” (which is) touted by BASF as the largest gene-function database in the world”
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