Crop Phenomics and High-throughput Phenotyping: Past Decades, Current Challenges and Future Perspectives

Abstract Since the whole-genome sequencing of many crops has been achieved, crop functional genomics studies have reached the large-scale and high-throughput stage. However, phenotypic data acquisition is still a bottleneck restricting crop breeding and functional genomics studies. Now technological advances allow us to relieve the bottleneck and explore more in the coming decades. Thus, in this article, we review main developments on high-throughput phenotyping in the controlled environments and field conditions as well as for post-harvest yield and quality assessment in past decades. Then, we describe the latest multiomics works combining high-throughput phenotyping and genetic studies. Finally, some conceptual challenges and future perspectives are also proposed. We hope to provide useful information and alternative phenotyping solutions for how to bridge the phenotype-genotype gap and believe that such endeavors in high-throughput phenotyping will accelerate plant genetic improvement and promote the next green revolution in crop breeding.