Belgium has a long-standing history in plant biotechnology research, elucidating how plants grow and develop under different conditions. Bioinformatics groups from UGent have developed tools for annotation of genomes (ORCAE) and comparative genomics (PLAZA) allowing researchers to gain further insights. The PLAZA plant genomics hub also emphasises on interoperability and reuse of data and is an ELIXIR Recommended Interoperability Resource (RIR) since 2021. With the initiation of large scale biodiversity projects to sequence species across the tree of life (e.g. the European Reference Genome Atlas (ERGA)), both platforms will be valuable to effectively make use of the generated data. Specifically for plant phenotyping data, PIPPA was developed. This central web interface and database provides tools for the management of plant imaging robots, and the analysis of images and data.

Our team works closely together with the European Infrastructure for Plant Phenotyping (EMPHASIS) and the ELIXIR Plant Sciences Community.