Designing Experiments for Physiological Phenomics.

Phenomics has emerged as the technology of choice for understanding quantitative genetic variation in plant physiology and plant breeding. Phenomics has allowed for unmatched precision in exploring plant life cycles and physiological patterns. As new technologies are developed, it is still vital to follow best practices for designing and planning to be able to fully exploit any experimental results. Here we describe the basic - but sometimes overlooked - considerations of a phenomics experiment to help you maximize the value from the data collected: choosing population and location, accounting for sources of variation, establishing a timeline, and leveraging ground-truth measurements.