The expansion of world population requires the development of new strategies and tools for agriculture to ensure that high levels of production will accommodate the needs of world population by  developing a highly productive and resource efficient agricultural systems. To that end, it is necessary to provide current breeding programs with improved methodologies (traits and protocols) for phenotyping together with a deeper knowledge of the molecular and  metabolic mechanisms that modulate plant response to abiotic constraints in terms of yield and quality. Therefore, the  development of new technological approaches, such as multispectral sensors and near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) is critical  to deliver new tools for efficient breeding programs and in field management of crops.

The current project has five main objetives: