lab-automation
Laboratory automation involves the development of technologies to increase research productivity, improve experimental data quality, and reduce cycle times. For plant science, automation is particularly valuable for high-throughput phenotyping and managing the precise environmental controls required for plant growth and development studies. Automated systems enable researchers to process large sample sizes efficiently, maintain standardized growing conditions, and collect consistent data—capabilities that are essential for accelerating crop improvement, genetic studies, and fundamental plant biology research.
open_in_new WikipediaPubMed · 2026-02-19
Researchers created BOTany Methods, a free toolkit of automated lab protocols for small robots that lets plant scientists run complex genetic experiments without needing coding skills or expensive equipment.
The BOTany Methods toolkit runs on Opentrons OT-2 robots, which are significantly cheaper than full biofoundry setups, lowering the barrier to lab automation for plant research.
The workflow covers a wide range of tasks — from simple primer dilution and PCR setup to complex operations like Plant Modular Cloning and bacterial transformation — all without requiring users to write or edit Python code.
The system supports users across all training levels, from undergraduate students to senior scientists, using table-based inputs to design and run custom experiments end-to-end.