Dear all, It is our pleasure to invite you to the Plant Phenotyping Forum discussing the role of Austria and Eastern Europe in plant phenotyping for sustainable agriculture. The Forum will address the plant phenotyping landscape and role of Austria, Czech Republic and Slovakia within the context of European plant phenotyping initiatives such as EMPHASIS and EPPN2020 with the goal to advance basic plant research, plant breeding and foster sustainable agriculture. The meeting will take place on September 13, 2018 , 1-5pm at the Vienna BioCenter Campus, Research Institute of Molecular Pathology, IMP Lecture Hall. (Free) registration: https://www.appn.at/plant-phenotyping-forum/ Confirmed participants and speakers (in alphabetical order): Marian Brestic, Slovak Agricultural University in Nitra, vice-rector for research and science Hermann Bürstmayr, Head, Division of Plant Breeding and Head, Institute for Biotechnology in Plant Production (BOKU) Pavel Hauptvogel, Director, Research Institute of Plant Production (NPPC) Ivan Ingelbrecht, Head, Plant Breeding and Genetics Laboratory, (IAEA) Jakub Jez, Head, VBCF Plant Sciences Facility & coordinator Austrian Plant Phenotyping Network (APPN) Gabriela Pastori, Chair, ESFRI Strategy Working Group on Health and Food Uli Schurr, Head, IBG-2: Plant Sciences, FZ Jülich & Coordinator ESFRI EMPHASIS project Lukas Spichal, Palacky University Olomouc, coordinator of the Czech Plant Phenotyping Network (CZPPN) Andreas Walter, Operating Director BioImaging Austria (CMI) A panel discussion, moderated by Uli Schurr, will follow the presentations. For those interested, we will tour the VBCF Plant Sciences Facility incl. the HT phenotyping platform. The full program is attached to this mail. Please feel free to share & spread the word! Looking very much forward to meeting you, Jakub Jez and Roland Pieruschka [https://www.appn.at/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Logo-full.png] https://www.appn.at/ Welcome [www.appn.at]<https://www.appn.at/> www.appn.at Welcome to the Austrian Plant Phenotyping Network (APPN) - "Enhancing the Austrian Plant Phenotyping Community!" Summary: Within this Plant Phenotyping Forum, we will discuss the role of Austria and Eastern Europe in agricultural production, as regions with huge potential and long-term traditions in the agricultural sector. Specifically, breeding and the consideration of environmental effects for continental climatic environments may require new breeding efforts in this region, including new strategies to develop new germplasm in pre-breeding programs and the application of modern breeding technologies, specifically to improve stress resistance to close the yield gap in times of a changing climate. In this context, the need to characterize the phenotype is essential to understand fundamental processes, which determine the structure and function of plants in particular. While significant progress has been made in molecular methods in recent years and the genomes of several plants have been sequenced this knowledge is not sufficient to simulate the phenotype of a plant without knowing the history and the dynamic interaction of the plant with its environment. Plant phenotyping - quantitative analysis of structure and function of plants - has become the major bottleneck and, quantitative information on genotype-environment relations is the key to address future challenges. Increasing the plant biomass production quantitatively and qualitatively can provide major contributions to grand challenges like food security on a global level, at the same time reducing a major driver for migration movements. Beyond fostering scientific progress, plant phenotyping requires a community effort. In this context EPPN2020, a EU funded I3 project provides access to key plant phenotyping facilities in Europe while EMPHASIS, a ESFRI listed project aims at the development of a long term sustainable pan European plant phenotyping infrastructure that addresses the needs of the diverse users from academia and industry including the operation and development of a pan-European e-infrastructure to effectively collect, process and provide data for the community.