b'KENT LOVVORN How We Can Sustainably CEO AND FOUNDER, VMEK SORTING TECHNOLOGY Boost Sunflower Yieldskent@vmek.comvmek.comAGRICULTURE IS HUGELY harnessed for crop improvement.important to the world, but alsoThe European Commission places a heavy burden on natu- Horizon 2020 funded project Is it Time to Automate? ral resources and poses a threatGAIN4CROPS is in the initial to the environment. stages of developing novel tech-Genomics-enabled breedingnologies to help crops become ONE BIG QUESTIONI often get asked is: whatsallows researchers to bring agri- better tolerant to heat and the difference between a manual quality score and anculturally important traits relateddrought. NRGene is involved in automaton quality score? to resource efficiency into elitethis effort by applying our exper-But the bigger question thats hanging in the aircultivars, creating plants that cantise in genomics to produce really isare you ready to automate? better withstand environmentalhigh-quality sunflower reference The overarching differences between a manualstresses and benefit the envi- genomes. The overarching goal and automated score is that, for a manual one, theresronment by reducing pesticideis a set of variants implemented human labor involved. That means, theres all the gooduse and cutting greenhouse gasin sunflowers that can improve and bad that comes with human labor: different skillemissions. Plants that are heatthe carbon fixation rate and levels, training, paying attention, remembering theand drought tolerant are neededthereby increase photosynthetic training, etc. It all depends on the cognitive power ofmore than ever, but most agri- efficiency, making plants better the person.cultural crops are not naturallyable to withstand environmental Thats not to say that completely automating istolerant to extreme weatherstress.going to come absolutely free of any problems. conditions.One such crop isThe aim is to explore whether Automating will introduce technology where thesunflower.causative genomic features can product would beinstead of everything being doneCultivated sunflower varietiesbe introduced by interspecific by one, specialized person, the machine can take thediffer from those of the wild rela- hybridization. material and detect or measure the quality score andtive in several key phenotypes,At NRGene, we make dis-deliver it to you.including earlier flowering time,coveries in diverse biological There would, of course, be a training and learningreduced branching and strongsystems, from wild understudied curve with the machines, but overall, the data collectionapical dominance, which resultsspecies to model systems for piece will be automatic and eliminate the possibilities ofin a single flowering head. evolution such as the sunflow-human error. Think about it: machines dont get tired,This phenotypic and eco- ers. On a personal note, having and machines cant write data down incorrectly. Youdlogical diversity is a valuabledevoted the past 15 years of my lose the small details that the human eye can detectreservoir of adaptive traits incareer to the study of sunflower that an automated system cant track, but if a system iswild populations that can beevolution and the development designed properly, the pros outweigh the cons.potentiallyof resources for the sunflower The really big, obvious pro of automating is thecommunity, this Horizon 2020 fact you can take more samples than youd be able toproject represents a unique manually.union of my previous research No matter how you cut it, whether youre doingwith broad expertise from public manual or automatic quality testing, youre going toand private partners to address have good results. But customers are wanting to go inthe very important issues of sus-the direction of requesting more samples throughouttainability and climate change.the bin. This proves to be a little more difficult manu-ally, but if youre automated, you can continuously take a slipstream from the flow and test a sample continu-ously, instead of a small scoop every 30 minutes.EVAN STATONThats where the question comes in: if youre sam- TECHNICAL SUPPORT pling more, are you going to hire 100 people to helpMANAGER, NRGENEget that much done, or are you going to automate? info@nrgene.comThe seed industry is seeing the benefits of automat- @NRGenenrgene.coming, and theyre becoming more flexible. Are you?SEPTEMBER 2021SEEDWORLD.COM /27'