High Throughput Plant Phenotyping

Current Project – WheatPhenoScale

MINISTERIO DE CIENCIA, INNOVACIÓN y UNIVERSIDADES
Proyectos I+D+i 2019

Durum wheat is one of the most important cereal crops around the Mediterranean basin, with high economic and cultural importance. Durum wheat is mostly cultivated under rainfed conditions, therefore being exposed to drought and heat stress conditions, while the
predicted effect of climate change in the Mediterranean Region will be particularly negative in the coming decades. Breeding may contribute to tackling the current and future challenges of durum wheat agriculture. However, the genetic advances for durum wheat in the past decades, at least in the case of Spain, have been modest. Nowadays phenotyping is considered as the main bottleneck hindering crop breeding efficiency. The objective of this project is to investigate how the efficiency and adoption of crop phenotyping may be accelerated, taking durum wheat as a case study. In that sense a multilevel research approach will be adopted, ranging from the identification of ideal plant (i.e. ideotype) characteristics, design of novel protocols for specific purposes, deployment of consolidated crop phenotyping approaches and detection of genotype adaptability to the environment. Concerning ideotypes, ear photosynthesis and root characteristics will be investigated as a way to increase radiation use efficiency and the amount of water used by the plant. Moving up to field phenotyping, the project will develop novel remote sensing approaches targeting specific traits, such as temperature, color, spectrum or metabolites in specific plant organs, as well as root functions, grain quality or even the future use of satellites as phenotyping platforms. Another objective of the project is to provide a proof-of-concept of the practical application of high-throughput, low-cost portable phenotyping equipment, based on RGB and multispectral imaging sensors. To that end, phenotyping protocols will be deployed in the breeding activities of Public Institutions (ITACyL and INIA, members of the second team) and a Seed Company (Limagrain Iberica). The last objective will be to study the range of adaptation of novel cultivars to the target environments, based on the combined use of satellite images and climate information. The scientific information, novel phenotyping protocols and tips for implementing phenotyping, generated through WheatPhenoScale will contribute to accelerate durum wheat breeding and can be easily extrapolated to bread wheat and other small-grain cereals in the Mediterranean.