Turning plant imaging research into working systems

When Jack Taverner introduced himself to the other participants at the Summer School Image Analysis for Plant Phenotyping, his job title stood out. While the group included plant researchers and data scientists, Jack was the only IT manager in the room.

He works at Ontario Plants, a Canadian plant propagation company that grows millions of young tomato, pepper and cucumber plants each year for growers across Canada and the United States. From sowing to shipping, the entire process takes around six weeks, with automation playing an increasingly important role.

The company recently established an R&D department to explore how plants can be grown more effectively, while reducing waste and unnecessary expenditure. Plant imaging is one of the areas it is beginning to investigate.

“You may wonder why you would send an IT manager to a course like this,” Jack says. “I may not be a researcher, but I am the person working behind the scenes to turn what the researchers want into reality.”

Jack is responsible for the company’s servers, networks, automated machinery and other technical infrastructure. As its R&D activities expand, his role increasingly overlaps with research projects that rely on large amounts of data and specialised equipment.

Plant imaging, for example, involves more than selecting a suitable camera. Images must be transferred, processed and stored, often in very large volumes. Decisions are needed about storage capacity, network performance, data retention and the systems that connect the different components.

“If you are taking gigabytes of images, how do you store them? How long do you keep them, and what infrastructure do you need to run it all?” Jack explains. “Those are the kinds of questions I bring to the process.”

Before implementing new imaging systems at Ontario Plants, he wanted a better understanding of how researchers collect and use the data. The summer school allowed him to examine both the scientific principles and the practical technologies involved.

“The theory is interesting, but for me the practical side is particularly important,” he says. “Whether it is selecting camera systems, implementing them or setting up the storage and networking behind them, this course helps me understand how everything fits together.”

The programme covers a substantial amount of material in a short period. Jack describes the week as intensive, but says the practical notebooks and exercises helped participants work directly with the concepts introduced during the lectures.

“There is a lot of information coming at you, but it is good learning,” he says. “The instructors are great, and the notebooks we use for the practical exercises are very robust.”

Although his role differed from those of most other participants, Jack found the content directly relevant to his work. Understanding the research process will help him ask better questions when colleagues propose new projects and design systems that better reflect what they are trying to achieve.

“My role is to make things happen,” he says. “The researchers know what they want to investigate. I need to understand enough about the cameras, images and data to build the systems that support that work.”

The varied backgrounds within the group were an important part of the experience. Researchers, data specialists and other professionals approached the same technologies from different angles, creating opportunities to discuss both the scientific possibilities and the practical challenges.

Jack believes this diversity is valuable because successful plant imaging projects rarely depend on one discipline alone. Researchers may define the questions, but IT infrastructure, hardware, data management and implementation determine whether the proposed approach can function at scale.

“The interaction has been great,” he says. “Everyone comes with a different perspective, and we have all got along very well.”

For Jack, the summer school provided a clearer picture of the complete imaging process. He will return to Canada not as a plant researcher, but with a better understanding of how to support the researchers around him.

“It gives me the knowledge I need to make these systems run better,” he says. “That is where I can make the biggest contribution.”