Improving agriculture with modern imaging
Building a new imaging modality that can show signs of various stress factors such as drought and nutrient deficiency in plants is the goal of the European project consortium under the Green Deal. Under the leadership of Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg (OVGU), involved in the research campus STIMULATE, the European project consortium, further consisting of VRVis (Austria), IBF Servizi (Italy), Innomed (Italy) was awarded a project in the I3 program, funded by the European Commission in the millions.
The basis for this cooperation and the successful application was a research sabbatical by Prof. Rose, spokesman for STIMULATE, which he spent at Neuromed in Italy (from which Innomed emerged) as well as the research cooperation agreement signed in this context by Prof. Strackeljan, the rector of the OVGU.
The two technology partners, OVGU and Innomed, will create an interregional technological production platform for the imaging system, which will combine magnetic resonance imaging with positron emission tomography, through the EU project that will start in November 2023. Vienna-based research institution VRVis, Center for Virtual Reality and Visualization, will integrate an AI-based program (segmentation method) for combined imaging. Bonifiche Ferraresi (IBF), a large Italian agricultural company will use the system in sustainable crop management and research. In the short term, the I3 project consortium will integrate the existing PET-MRI system into a multimodal crop imaging device that is innovative compared to existing solutions. Compared to previous methods, a portable plant PET/MRI imaging system simultaneously measures the space-time dynamics of metabolism and high-resolution plant morphology. This enables the extraction of new digital biomarkers that correlate with early signs of plant stress before symptoms become obvious and irreversible.
The project makes a significant contribution to the EU Green Deal by enabling sustainable agriculture. In the long term, it will also strengthen the EU's agricultural value chain and competitiveness. New agricultural jobs will be created and the development regions of the project partners will be strengthened. The participation of recognized SMEs ensures that the project is implemented economically and in line with market requirements.