ROOTED

A deeper understanding of the interactions between soils and plants, especially at the root zone, where they take up water and nutrients may support sustainable intensification of agricultural production. Research is indicating that a greater understanding of roots and soil functions may lead to increases in crop yields, reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from soils, enhanced productivity in grasslands and reductions in fertilizer requirements to land. However, data gaps remain in our understanding of how plant roots interact with their environment from a physiological and phenotypic perspective. Plant Phenotyping has been described as the bottleneck to food security, yet the real bottleneck to plant phenotyping is thought to be image analysis and processing. The challenge of ensuring food security provides the impetus for ROOTED (Root Phenotyping Integrated Educational Doctoral Network). ROOTED will apply deep learning and artificial intelligence to speed up data generation in root phenotyping. 

Agriculture is increasingly using digital technologies, but currently 44% of the European workforce do not have these basic skills. This is a severe skills gap that Europe needs to close urgently to avoid economic downturn. ROOTED will consolidate the complimentary expertise of an international, interdisciplinary, multi-sectoral team to train a new generation of creative, resilient, adaptive multi-skilled scientists capable of innovating the fields of plant and soil sciences to actively contribute to the goal of doubling food production in a sustainable manner by 2050. Soil health and food is one of the 5 mission areas for Horizon Europe and the findings from ROOTED would be directly applicable to the EU’s Green deal and a Soil Deal for Europe. ROOTED graduates will have a level of scientific, communication and digital skills mastery that enables them to move straight into employment in agri-food businesses, seed and breeding companies, advisory and scientific roles.