AgLab

1. Which heritable traits hold yield and quality under heat, drought and salinity stress in small-plot conditions?
2. How much of the variance in those traits can be captured by low-cost phenotyping — imaging, canopy temperature, simple spectral indices — rather than by destructive sampling?
3. Can a small breeding programme publish selection data in a form other programmes can reuse without re-running the trial?

• Replicated small-plot trials with randomised block designs, documented before planting and registered as a pre-analysis plan.
• Phenotyping by fixed-schedule imaging and hand measurement, with every instrument and calibration logged.
• Selection by estimated breeding values from mixed models; the model code is published with the data.
• Seed and tissue handling under written protocols, with chain-of-custody records for every accession.

• No genetically engineered organisms. Selection is by conventional crossing and phenotype.
• No regulated plant material is imported or moved across state lines without the permits the movement requires.
• No result is described publicly before the data and the analysis code are available.

• 2026 Q4in progressAgLab trial protocol and pre-analysis plan, published
• 2027 Q2plannedFirst AgLab trial season

Full roadmap

Nothing published yet. The first output of each programme is its protocol, posted before work begins; the first paper follows the first completed study.

Federal programmes whose published scope this work falls within. None has been applied to; see the grants page for what has to exist first.

• USDA NIFA — Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI). Plant breeding for agricultural production systems is within the Foundational and Applied Science priority areas.
• USDA — Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) / STTR. A small business conducting agricultural research with a commercialisation path is the programme's stated applicant.
• USDA NIFA — Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Initiative (OREI). Cultivar development for organic systems is an explicit priority when the trial is run under organic management.