A Telemetric, Gravimetric Platform for Real-Time Physiological Phenotyping of Plant–Environment Interactions

Abstract

Food security for the growing global population is a major concern. The data provided by genomic tools far exceeds the supply of phenotypic data, creating a knowledge gap. To meet the challenge of improving crops to feed the growing global population, this gap must be bridged.Physiological traits are considered key functional traits in the context of responsiveness or sensitivity to environmental conditions. Many recently introduced high-throughput (HTP) phenotyping techniques are based on remote sensing or imaging and are capable of directly measuring morphological traits, but measure physiological parameters mainly indirectly. This paper describes a method for direct physiological phenotyping that has several advantages for the functional phenotyping of plant-environment interactions. It helps users overcome the many challenges encountered in the use of load-cell gravimetric systems and pot experiments. The suggested techniques will enable users to distinguish between soil weight, plant weight and soil water content, providing a method for the continuous and simultaneous measurement of dynamic soil, plant and atmosphere conditions, alongside the measurement of key physiological traits. This method allows researchers to closely mimic field stress scenarios while taking into consideration the environment's effects on the plants' physiology. This method also minimizes pot effects, which are one of the major problems in pre-field phenotyping. It includes a feed-back fertigation system that enables a truly randomized experimental design at a field-like plant density. This system detects the soil-water-content limiting threshold (θ) and allows for the translation of data into knowledge through the use of a real-time analytic tool and an online statistical resource. This method for the rapid

Functional physiological phenotyping with functional mapping: A general framework to bridge the phenotype-genotype gap in plant physiology

“…The PlantArray 3.0 platform is a multi-sensor telemetric platform that enables simultaneous and continuous monitoring of key plants' physiological traits. A detailed description of the system was recently published in Dalal et al. (2020) .…”

The potential of dynamic physiological traits in young tomato plants to predict field-yield performance

“…1A). Whole-plant, continuous physiological measurements were taken using a high-throughput, telemetric, gravimetric-based phenotyping system (Plantarry 3.0 system; Plant-DiTech, Israel) in the greenhouse of the I-CORE Center for Functional Phenotyping (http://departments.agri.huji.ac.il/plantscience/icore.phpon), as described in (Dalal et al , 2020).…”

“…The experimental set-up was generally similar to that described by (Dalal et al , 2020), with some modifications. Briefly, before the start of the experiment, all load-cell units were calibrated for accuracy and drift level under constant load weights (1 kg and 5 kg).…”

Recent developments and potential of robotics in plant eco-phenotyping

“…Gravimetric systems have shown the capacity to observe plant performance and behavior from a different angle by analyzing water usage, evaporation rate, and related parameters. Such approaches can provide an insight about more subtle plant phenotypic traits and examine responses to imposed stresses such as drought and salinity [63]. As compared with other scales indoor plant eco-phenotyping, Greenhouse-level systems provide sufficient planting dimensions to allow the acquisition of phenotyping information throughout the full lifecycle of the plant.…”