Patent ID: 9465911
Filing Date: 2016-10-11
CPC Classification: A01H,B01D,G01N,G16B

Claim Text:
1. An unbiased method for selecting and growing at least one independent plant having a predicted phenotype, said method comprising: a) establishing phenotypic profiles of at least two groups of plants, wherein said at least two groups of plants have different phenotypes, or wherein said at least two groups of plants are grown under different environmental conditions; b) establishing for each group of plants of said at least two groups of plants a metabolic profile comprising an entire set of metabolites, said establishing comprising i) extracting metabolites from each group of plants; ii) separating said metabolites by chromatography to generate a first set of data; iii) detecting the mass-to-charge fragments produced by said metabolites using mass spectrometry to generate a second set of data; iv) pre-processing said first set of data and said second set of data to align, reduce noise and dimensionality, and normalize, wherein the entire set of metabolites for each group of plants comprises all of the metabolites that are detected and pre-processed to eliminate bias; c) building a model using the pre-processed data of step b) to predict a quantitative or qualitative phenotype; d) selecting variables by validation or cross-validation of step c); e) establishing a metabolic profile of the at least one independent plant, f) applying the model of c) to the metabolic profile of the independent plant to predict expression of the quantitative or qualitative phenotype of the at least one independent plant; and g) growing the selected at least one independent plant predicted to express the qualitative or quantitative phenotype, wherein the selected plant has the same genetic background or a different genetic background as at least one of the groups of plants used to establish the model.