Abstract
Multiple abiotic stresses such as drought, heat, cold, frost, salinity, high light intensity, and many other challenges affect the growth of crop plants during the life cycle leading to substantial yield losses every year. These challenges are becoming more serious under the current scenario of climate change. Therefore, it is required to develop climate-resilient crops using various conventional and genomic approaches. Now physiological, biochemical, and molecular mechanisms responsible for tolerance to the above abiotic stresses are well known, and many morphophysiological traits have been identified which impart tolerance to these abiotic stresses. These traits are either constitutive, i.e., express under both stressed and non-stressed conditions, or adaptive which express exclusively when stress is commenced and are only important for plant’s survival. Breeders used successfully constitutive traits (i.e., water-use efficiency, root-based traits, phenology, ABA accumulation, “stay-green” character, leaf area index, delayed senescence, canopy temperature depression, stomatal conductance, fertility of reproductive parts, chlorophyll fluorescence, etc.) in improving yield of crop plants. However, relationship of adaptive traits (i.e., osmotic adjustment, proline accumulation, remobilization of reserve carbohydrates from stems and leaves, membrane stability, lethal leaf water potential, and many other morphophysiological traits) during stress conditions towards improving yield is still questionable. In spite of this, focus has also been given on the past years for harnessing the potentiality of adaptive traits indirectly towards the development of abiotic stress-tolerant genotypes. Currently, genetic diversity for both type of traits is available in exiting germplasm of diverse crop species. Therefore, it provides enormous opportunities for developing stress-tolerant cultivars. However, it is required effective phenotyping methods that are rapid and reliable to screen the large number of genotypes. These traits can be screened under both natural and controlled conditions. Although high-precision phenotyping can be done for many traits related to abiotic stresses under natural conditions, there are many other traits that are only screened under controlled conditions. Moreover, certain traits are essential to screen because they are positively associated with yield or tolerance to abiotic stress and their measurement can only be possible in controlled conditions. Because the environment plays an important role in the growth and development of crop plants, crop plants face two different conditions during the phenotyping of interested traits. As a result each environmental condition has its own limitations. In this chapter, we discussed the precision phenotyping of traits of agronomic importance under the controlled and natural environments.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Araus JL et al (2008) Breeding for yield potential and stress adaptation in cereals. Crit Rev Plant Sci 27:1–36
Basu PS, Berger JD, Turner NC, Chaturvedi SK, Ali M, Siddique KHM (2007a) Osmotic adjustment of chickpea (Cicer arietinum) is not associated with changes in carbohydrate composition or leaf gas exchange under drought. Ann Appl Biol 150:217–225, Blackwell Publishers, UK
Basu PS, Ali M, Chaturvedi SK (2007b) Osmotic adjustment increases water uptake, remobilization of assimilates and maintains photosynthesis in chickpea under drought. Indian J Exp Biol 45:261–267
Blum A (2011a) Plant breeding for water–limited environments. Springer, New York
Blum A (2011b) Drought resistance – is it really a complex trait? Funct Plant Biol 38:753–757
Blum A, Munns R, Passioura JB, Turner NC (1996) Genetically engineered plants resistant to soil drying and salt stress: how to interpret osmotic relations? Plant Physiol 110:1051–1053, Acevedo, 1993
Cabrera-Bosquet L et al (2012) High-throughput phenotyping and genomic selection: the frontiers of crop breeding converge. J Integr Plant Biol 54:312–320
Cairns JE et al (2011) Influence of the soil physical environment on drought stress and its implications for drought research. Field Crop Res 121:303–310
Cairns JE et al (2012a) Dissecting maize productivity: ideotypes associated with grain yield under drought stress and well-watered conditions. J Integr Plant Biol 54:1007–1020
Cairns JE et al (2012b) Maize production in a changing climate: impacts, adaptation, and mitigation strategies. Adv Agron 114:1–58
Cairns JE et al (2013) Adapting maize production to climate change in sub-Saharan Africa. Food Sec 5:345–360
Chapman SC, Edmeades GO (1999) Selection improves drought tolerance in tropical maize populations: II. Direct and correlated responses among secondary traits. Crop Sci 39:1315–1324
Cobb JN et al (2013) Next-generation phenotyping: requirements and strategies for enhancing our understanding of genotype – phenotype relationships and its relevance to crop improvement. Theor Appl Genet 126:867–887
Costa JM et al (2013) Thermography to explore plant–environment interactions. J Exp Bot 64:3937–3949
Ferrio JP, Mateo MA, Bort J, Abdalla O, Voltas J, Araus JL (2007) Relationships of grain D13C and D18O with wheat phenology and yield under water- limited conditions. Ann Appl Biol 150:207–215
Fiorani F, Rascher U, Jahnke S, Schurr U (2012) Imaging plants dynamics in heterogenic environments. Curr Opin Biotech 23:227–235
Fischer RA, Maurer R (1978) Drought resistance in spring wheat cultivars. I. Grain yield responses. Aust J Agric Res 29:892–912
Fischer RA, Rees D, Sayre KD, Lu ZM, Condon AG, Larque Saavedra A (1998) Wheat yield progress associated with higher stomatal conductance and photosynthetic rate, and cooler canopies. Crop Sci 38:1467–1475
Frascaroli E, Tuberosa R (1993) Effect of abscisic acid on pollen germination and tube growth of maize genotypes. Plant Breed 110:250–254
Fuentes S et al (2012) Computational water stress indices obtained from thermal image analysis of grapevine canopies. Irrig Sci 30:523–536
Gleadow R et al (2013) Crops for a future climate. Funct Plant Biol 40:iii–vi
Grant OM, Chaves MM, Jones HG (2006) Optimizing thermal imaging as a technique for detecting stomatal closure induced by drought stress under greenhouse conditions. Physiol Plant 127:507–518
Grant OM, Tronina L, Jones HG, Chaves MM (2007) Exploring thermal imaging variables for the detection of stress responses in grapevine under different irrigation regimes. J Exp Bot 58:815–825
Gray SB, Dermody O, DeLucia EH (2010) Spectral reflectance from a soybean canopy exposed to elevated CO2 and O3. J Exp Bot 61:4413–4422
Gutierrez M, Reynolds MP, Klatt AR (2010) Association of water spectral indices with plant and soil water relations in contrasting wheat genotypes. J Exp Bot 61:3291–3303
Harris K, Subudhi PK, Borrell A, Jordan D, Rosenow D, Nguyen H, Klein P, Klein R, Mullet J (2007) Sorghum stay-green QTL individually reduce post-flowering drought-induced leaf senescence. J Exp Bot 58:327–338
Hatfield JL, Gitelson AA, Schepers JS, Walthall CL (2008) Application of spectral remote sensing for agronomic decisions. Agron J 100:S117–S131
Hose E, Clarkson DT, Steudle E, Schreiber L, Hartung W (2001) The exodermis: a variable apoplastic barrier. J Exp Bot 52:2245–2264
Izanloo A, Condon AG, Langridge P, Tester M, Schnurbusch T (2008) Different mechanisms of adaptation to cyclic water stress in two South Australian bread wheat cultivars. J Exp Bot 59:3327–3346
Jones HG (2007) Monitoring plant and soil water status: established and novel methods revisited and their relevance to studies of drought tolerance. J Exp Bot 58:119–130
Kakani VG, Reddy RK, Koti S, Wallace TP, Prasad PVV, Reddy VR, Zhao D (2005) Differences in in vitro pollen germination and pollen tube growth of cotton cultivars in response to high temperatures. Ann Bot 96:607–612
Kalapos T, Van den Boogaard R, Lambers H (1996) Effect of soil drying on growth, biomass allocation and leaf gas exchange of two annual grass species. Plant Soil 185:137–149
Kashiwagi J, Krishnamurthy L, Crouch JH, Serraj R (2006) Variability of root length density and its contributions to seed yield in chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) under terminal drought stress. Field Crop Res 95:171–181
Kholova J, Hash CT, Kakkera A, Kocova M, Vadez V (2010a) Constitutive water – conserving mechanisms are correlated with the terminal drought tolerance of pearl millet [Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R. Br.]. J Exp Bot 61:369–377
Kholova J, Hash CT, Kumar PL, Yadav RS, Kocova M, Vadez V (2010b) Terminal drought – tolerant pearl millet [Pennisetum glaucum (L.)] R.Br.have high leaf ABA and limit transpiration at high vapour pressure deficit. J Exp Bot 61:1431–1440
Landi P, Conti S, Gherardi F, Sanguineti MC, Tuberosa R (1995) Genetic analysis of leaf ABA concentration and of agronomic traits in maize hybrids grown under different water regimes. Maydica 40:179–186
Mace ES, Singh V, VanOosterom EJ, Hammer GL, Hunt CH, Jordan DR (2012) QTL for nodal root angle in sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L. Moench) co- locate with QTL for traits associated with drought adaptation. Theor Appl Genet 124:97–109
Maes WH, Steppe K (2012) Estimating evapotranspiration and drought stress with ground-based thermal remote sensing in agriculture: a review. J Exp Bot 63:4671–4712
Masuka B et al (2012) Deciphering the code: successful abiotic stress phenotyping for molecular breeding. J Integr Plant Biol 54:238–249
Monneveux P, Ribaut J-M (2006) Secondary traits for drought tolerance improvement in cereals. In: Ribaut J-M (ed) Drought adaptation cereals. The Haworth Press, Binghamton, pp 97–143
Montes J, Melchinger A, Reif J (2007) Novel throughput phenotyping platforms in plant genetic studies. Trends Plant Sci 12:433–436
Olivares-Villegas JJ, Reynolds MP, McDonald GK (2007) Drought-adaptive attributes in the Seri/Babax hexaploid wheat population. Funct Plant Biol 34:189–203
Passioura JB (1977) Grain yield, harvest index and water use of wheat. J Aust Inst Agric Sci 43:117–120
Passioura JB (2006) The perils of pot experiments. Funct Plant Biol 33:1075–1079
Passioura JB (2010) Scaling up: the essence of effective agricultural research. Funct Plant Biol 37:585–591
Passioura JB (2012) Phenotyping for drought tolerance in grain crops: when is it useful to breeders? Funct Plant Biol 39:851–859
Pieruschka R, Poorter H (2012) Phenotyping plants: genes, phenes and machines. Funct Plant Biol 39:813–820
Pinto RS, Reynolds MP, Mathews KL, McIntyre CL, Olivares– Villegas JJ, Chapman SC (2010) Heat and drought adaptive QTL in a wheat population designed to minimize confounding agronomic effects. Theor Appl Genet 121:1001–1021
Poorter H, Buhler J, van Dusschoten D, Climent J, Postma JA (2012) Pot size matters: a meta-analysis of the effects of rooting volume on plant growth. Funct Plant Biol 39:839–850
Poorter HH, Farquhar GD (1994) Transpiration, intercellular carbon dioxide concentration and carbon-isotope discrimination of 24 wild species differing in relative growth rate. Aust J Plant Physiol 21:507–516
Prashar A, Jones HG (2014) Infra-red thermography as a high-throughput tool for field phenotyping. Agronomy 4:397–417
Pratap A, Basu PS, Gupta S, Malviya N, Rajan N, Tomar R, Latha M, Nadarajan N, Singh NP (2014) Identification and characterization of sources for photo- and thermo-insensitivity in Vigna species. Plant Breed (in press)
Rebetzke GJ, Ellis MH, Bonnett DG, Richards RA (2007) Molecular mapping of genes for coleoptiles growth in bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). Theor Appl Genet 114:1173–1183
Rebetzke GJ et al (2013) A multisite managed environment facility for targeted trait and germplasm phenotyping. Funct Plant Biol 40:1–13
Reynolds M, Manes Y, Izanloo A, Langridge P (2009) Phenotyping approaches for physiological breeding and gene discovery in wheat. Ann Appl Biol 155:309–320
Reynolds MP et al (eds) (2012) Physiological breeding I: interdisciplinary approaches to improve crop adaptation, CIMMYT
Richards RA (2006) Physiological traits used in the breeding of new cultivars for water-scarce environments. Agric Water Manag 80:197–211
Richards RA, Watt M, Rebetzke GJ (2007) Physiological traits and cereal germplasm for sustainable agricultural systems. Euphytica 154:409–425
Romer C et al (2011) Robust fitting of fluorescence spectra for pre-symptomatic wheat leaf rust detection with support vector machines. Comput Electron Agric 79:180–188
Ruta N, Liedgen M, Fracheboud Y, Stamp P, Hund A (2010) QTLs for the elongation of axile and lateral roots of maize in response to low water potential. Theor Appl Genet 120:621–631
Sabadin PK, Malosetti M, Boer MP, Tardin FD, Santos FG, Guimaraes CT, Gomide RL, Andrade CLT, Albuquerque PEP, Caniato FF, Mollinari M, Margarido GRA, Oliveira BF, Schaffert RE, Garcia AAF, van Eeuwijk FA, Magalhaes JV (2012) Studying the genetic basis of drought tolerance in sorghum by managed stress trials and adjustments for phonological and plant height differences. Theor Appl Genet 124:1389–1402
Sadras VO, Reynolds MP, de laVega AJ, Petrie PR, Robinson R (2009) Phenotypic plasticity of yield and phenology in wheat, sunflower and grapevine. Field Crop Res 110:242–250
Seiler C, Harshavardhan VT, Rajesh K, Reddy PS, Strickert M, Rolletschek H, Scholz U, Wobus U, Sreenivasulu N (2011) ABA biosynthesis and degradation contributing to ABA homeostasis during barley seed development under control and terminal drought-stress conditions. J Exp Bot 62:2615–2632
Setter TL (2006) The role of abscisic acid under water-limited conditions. In: Ribaut J-M (ed) Drought adaptation in cereals. The Haworth Press, Binghamton, pp 505–530
Sharp RE, Poroyko V, Hejlek LG, Spollen WG, Springer GK, Bohnert HJ, Nguyen HT (2004) Root growth maintenance during water deficits: physiology to functional genomics. J Exp Bot 55:2343–2351
Shi L, Shi TX, Broadley MR, White PJ, Long Y, Meng JL, Xu FS, Hammond JP (2013) High-throughput root phenotyping screens identify genetic loci associated with root architectural traits in Brassica napus under contrasting phosphate availabilities. Ann Bot 112:381–389
Shukla AK, Ladha JK, Singh VK, Dwivedi BS, Balasubramanian V, Gupta RK, Sharma SK, Singh Y, Pathak H, Pandey PS, Padre AT, Yadav RL (2004) Calibrating the leaf color chart for nitrogen management indifferent genotype of rice and wheat in a systems perspective. Agron J 96:1606–1621
Staedler YM, Masson D, Schoenenberger J (2013) Plant tissues in 3D via X-ray tomography: simple contrasting methods allow high resolution imaging. PLoS ONE 8:e75295
Subbarao GV, Johansen C, Slinkard AE, Rao RCN, Saxena NP, Chauhan YS (1995) Strategies for improving drought resistance in grain legumes. Crit Rev Plant Sci 14:469–523
Trachsel S, Kaeppler SM, Brown KM, Lynch JP (2011) Shovelomics: high throughput phenotyping of maize (Zea mays L.) root architecture in the field. Plant Soil 341:75–87
Vadez V, Deshpande SP, Kholova J, Hammer GL, Borrell AK, Talwar HS, Hash CT (2011) Stay-green quantitative trait loci’s effects on water extraction, transpiration efficiency and seed yield depend on recipient parent background. Funct Plant Biol 38:553–566
Von Mogel KH (2013) Taking the phenomics revolution into the field. CSA News, March, pp 4–10
Wasilewska A, Vlad F, Sirichandra C, Redko Y, Jammes F, Valon C, Frey NFD, Leung J (2008) An update on abscisic acid signaling in plants and more. Mol Plant 1:198–217
Weber VS et al (2012) Efficiency of managed-stress screening of elite maize hybrids under drought and low nitrogen for yield under rainfed conditions in Southern Africa. Crop Sci 52:1011–1020
White JW, Andrade-Sanchez P, Gore MA, Bronson KF, Coffelt TA, Conley MM, Feldmann KA, French AN, Heun JT, Hunsaker DJ, Jenks MA, Kimball BA, Roth RL, Strand RJ, Thorp KR, Wall GW, Wang GY (2012) Field- based phenomics for plant genetics research. Field Crop Res 133:101–112
Whitmore AP, Whalley WR (2009) Physical effects of soil drying on roots and crop growth. J Exp Bot 60:2845–2857
Winterhalter L, Mistele B, Jampatong S, Schmidhalter U (2011) High throughput phenotyping of canopy water mass and canopy temperature in well-watered and drought stressed tropical maize hybrids in the vegetative stage. Eur J Agron 35:22–32
Xiong YC, Li FM, Zhang T, Xia C (2007) Evolution mechanism of non-hydraulic root-to-shoot signal during the anti-drought genetic breeding of spring wheat. Environ Exp Bot 59:193–205
Zaman-Allah M, Jenkinson DM, Vadez V (2011a) A conservative pattern of water use, rather than deep or profuse rooting, is critical for the terminal drought tolerance of chickpea. J Exp Bot 62:4239–4252
Zaman-Allah M, Jenkinson DM, Vadez V (2011b) Chickpea genotypes contrasting for seed yield under terminal drought stress in the field differ for traits related to the control of water use. Funct Plant Biol 38:270–281
Zhang H, Tan GLL, Yang LNN, Yang JC, Zhang JH, Zhao BH (2009) Hormones in the grains and roots in relation to post-anthesis development of inferior and superior spikelets in japonica/indica hybrid rice. Plant Physiol Biochem 47:195–204
Zheng BY, Shi LJ, Ma YT, Deng QY, Li BG, Guo Y (2008) Comparison of architecture among different cultivars of hybrid rice using a spatial light model based on 3-D digitising. Funct Plant Biol 35:900–910
Zheng HJ, Wu AZ, Zheng CC, Wang YF, Cai R, Shen XF, Xu RR, Liu P, Kong LJ, Dong ST (2009) QTL mapping of maize (Zea mays) stay-green traits and their relationship to yield. Plant Breed 128:54–62
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer India
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Basu, P.S., Srivastava, M., Singh, P., Porwal, P., Kant, R., Singh, J. (2015). High-Precision Phenotyping Under Controlled Versus Natural Environments. In: Kumar, J., Pratap, A., Kumar, S. (eds) Phenomics in Crop Plants: Trends, Options and Limitations. Springer, New Delhi. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-2226-2_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-2226-2_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New Delhi
Print ISBN: 978-81-322-2225-5
Online ISBN: 978-81-322-2226-2
eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life SciencesBiomedical and Life Sciences (R0)