We are interested in participating in a consortium on Topic 1"Enhance fertilizer efficiency and reduce fertilizer use" especially the areas of fertilizer utilization ( to improve nitrogen use efficiency) and biological nitrogen fixation by co-cultivating strategies using genetics/genomics, advanced phenomics (sensors/drones/robotics) strategies. In addition, we have extensive experience of conducting field trails.
Further, we recently got funded for a project to develop better forage grasses with high Nitrogen use efficiency (NUE). We are employing multidisciplinary tools like genetics, genomics, sensors, robotics and AI/ML models to answer our research questions.
The Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU) is one of the leading Universities in Plant Sciences. Our organisation motto is "sustainability". NMBU research team has access to modern advanced sequencing and genotyping equipment, e.g., MiSeq, Affymetrix GeneTitans, Illumina iScan, Sequenom Mass-Array4 and Oxford PromethION nanopore. The SKP (Centre for Plant Research in Controlled Climate) established in 1995 has advance facilities for lab and field trials at NMBU. The robotic lab at Realtek has advanced robotic systems such as Thorvald, a modular and re-configurable agricultural robot from Saga Robotics, RB-VOGUI mobile robot from Robotnik, HK1000-DM4-E mobile robot from SuperDroids, mini-SE FPV and Inspire 2 drones from DJI, as well as robotic manipulators from Mitsubishi and Universal Robots. To complement the robots with proper sensing technologies, the robotic lab also has Velodyne VL16, and Ouster OS0-128 high-definition 3D LiDAR sensors as well as several RGB and Depth camera systems, IMU, and GNSS. Skilled and experienced engineers and staff at the robotic group will be great assets in the execution of WP1 and WP2. Further, NMBU has a centrally serviced computer cluster with 580 CPU, 4TB RAM and 430TB storage, and the faculty has bioinformaticians and system biologists doing network analyses of multilevel genotype-phenotype associations in several organisms. For storing/handling big data, internal data servers at NMBU, Norwegian National Infrastructure for Research Data (NIRD) will be utilized.