DuPont, Purdue Partner on Phenotyping Research

Research will be performed at the Indiana Corn and Soybean Innovation Center in West Lafayette.

Purdue University is partnering with Iowa-based DuPont Pioneer in an effort to support students pursuing agriculture-related majors and plant sciences research. As part of the collaboration, DuPont has granted Purdue access to its proprietary phenotyping and ear photometry technology.

Purdue says the technology be used to advance research at its Indiana Corn and Soybean Innovation Center, the automated field phenotyping facility that opened in August. Researchers will be able to see how the genetic makeup of a plant, in this case corn, adapts and reacts to the environment and which traits affect the plant’s overall performance.

"The ear photometry toolkit will allow us to measure corn phenotype and understand how the environment impacts the genotype," said Karen Plaut, senior associate dean for research and faculty affairs and director of agricultural research at Purdue. "In Indiana, we plant more than 5 million acres of corn per year and research to understand how the environment impacts yield is critical to our farmers."

DuPont Pioneer, subsidiary of Delaware-based DuPont (NYSE: DD), will also endow the Henry Wallace Chair in Plant Sciences in Purdue’s College of Agriculture. The chair will oversee research conducted by students, faculty and others at the Indiana Corn and Soybean Innovation Center.

The company has pledged funding for five years, totaling $1 million.