Cross-cutting improvements: fair-fair: findable, accessible, interoperable reproducible - facilitation of accessible imaging research for plant phenotyping and beyond

The National Science Foundation Division of Biological Infrastructure awarded $599,517 to the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center on August 1, 2026, under the Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) to develop an image data sharing ecosystem for plant phenotyping research.

The project builds on three existing tools and platforms to create standards-compliant infrastructure for sharing research imaging data across plant phenotyping and broader imaging communities. The initiative addresses the absence of centralized, community-standard image repositories comparable to existing DNA sequence databases, lowering technical and financial barriers to open science data sharing while promoting adoption of metadata standards including Recommended Metadata for Biological Images and Minimum Information About a Plant Phenotyping Experiment. The work scales across cellular, whole-plant, plot, and field-level phenotyping datasets.

The award, obligated in full at $599,517, runs through July 31, 2029, with work performed in Olivette, Missouri. The project is supported by funding from the Directorate for Biological Sciences and managed by the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure.

Abstract

Accurately measuring numerous plant traits (PHENOTYPES) is essential to breeding, developing, and managing crops, and understanding fundamental processes of plant systems that we require for food, fuel, and fiber. Image data for plant phenotyping scales from cellular PHENOTYPES, to whole plants, to plots, to fields. Interpretation and utilization of public data hinges on there being complete metadata associated with image datasets. Standards such as recommended metadata for biological images and minimum information about a plant phenotyping experiment have been developed for the bioimaging and plant phenotyping communities, respectively. However, adoption and utilization of these standards by the community are not consistent in part because the plant phenotyping community, and the larger imaging community do not have standard places to share image data as is the practice for DNA sequence data (e.g. sequence read archive, national center for biotechnology information, etc.). A successful research image data sharing platform and ecosystem would aim to lower both the technical and financial challenges to data sharing as well as promoting the use of community standards for making datasets fair. The project develops an image data sharing ecosystem that builds on three existing tools and platforms to solve this important open science problem in plant phenotyping and other research areas affordably and efficiently. The project is supported with funding from the directorate for biological sciences (BIO) and managed by the directorate for computer and information science and engineering (CISE) office of advanced cyberinfrastructure (OAC). This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.- subawards are not planned for this award.