Robustness of plant breeding systems under automated phenotyping

Abstract

Automated phenotyping is hailed to transform modern agricultural systems and relieve many sustainability challenges, like maintaining food security, halting biodiversity loss, and adapting to climate change. Yet, these issues can be traced from farming back to plant breeding and highly depend on the crop genetic diversity in use. Engineering and plant science usually take a look at automated phenotyping from a technical perspective and value its merits for research in plant breeding. In contrast, we lay out a more holistic view and ask what the social-ecological-technical repercussions to the robustness of on-site crop genetic diversity are from laboratory to breeding nursery where varieties for farming are being produced. We argue that automated phenotyping has a twofold impact on systemic robustness. On the one hand, it improves adaptive capacity by accelerating the breeding process. On the other hand, it's implementation can destabilize the system and have unforeseen negative impacts on on-site crop genetic diversity. Therefore, we call for explicit monitoring of the possible side effects by the system's governance.