TERRA-REF data processing infrastructure

Abstract

The Transportation Energy Resources from Renewable Agriculture Phenotyping Reference Platform (TERRA-REF) provides a data and computation pipeline responsible for collecting, transferring, processing and distributing large volumes of crop sensing and genomic data from genetically informative germplasm sets. The primary source of these data is a field scanner system built over an experimental field at the University of Arizona Maricopa Agricultural Center. The scanner uses several different sensors to observe the field at a dense collection frequency with high resolution. These sensors include RGB stereo, thermal, pulse-amplitude modulated chlorophyll fluorescence, imaging spectrometer cameras, a 3D laser scanner, and environmental monitors. In addition, data from sensors mounted on tractors, UAVs, an indoor controlled-environment facility, and manually collected measurements are integrated into the pipeline. Up to two TB of data per day are collected and transferred to the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois (NCSA) where they are processed.