High‐throughput field phenotyping reveals genetic variation in photosynthetic traits in durum wheat under drought

Abstract

Chlorophyll fluorescence (ChlF) is a powerful non-invasive technique for probing photosynthesis. Although proposed as a method for drought tolerance screening, ChlF has not yet been fully adopted in physiological breeding, mainly due to limitations in high-throughput field phenotyping capabilities. The light-induced fluorescence transient (LIFT) sensor has recently been shown to reliably provide active ChlF data for rapid and remote characterisation of plant photosynthetic performance. We used the LIFT sensor to quantify photosynthesis traits across time in a large panel of durum wheat genotypes subjected to a progressive drought in replicated field trials over two growing seasons. The photosynthetic performance was measured at the

Harnessing Chlorophyll Fluorescence for Phenotyping Analysis of Wild and Cultivated Tomato for High Photochemical Efficiency under Water Deficit for Climate Change Resilience

“…Deficit irrigation must be applied in combination with other cultural practices such as pruning, grafting, de-leafing, and fertilization, which also have a substantial impact on tomato fruit quality [8,[70][71][72]. Although chlorophyll fluorescence is a dominant non-destructive technique for probing photosynthetic tolerance to drought stress [25], and has frequently been used as a method for drought tolerance screening [50,51,73], it has not yet been totally implemented in physiological breeding [73] and for evaluation of the minimum irrigation levels for efficient photosynthetic performance.…”

From remotely‐sensed solar‐induced chlorophyll fluorescence to ecosystem structure, function, and service: Part II—Harnessing data

“…On the other hand, active fluorescence techniques are often lacking high throughput capabilities for large field‐phenotyping experiments. Recently laser‐based scanning fluorescence systems have been shown to potentially overcome this limitation of throughput, but thus far only a very limited number of studies using active fluorescence approaches are available (Keller et al, 2022; Zendonadi Dos Santos et al, 2021). Developing SIF‐capable phenotyping systems may allow for rapid screening of genotypes with high photosynthetic capacity under different environmental and/or management conditions in statistically relevant settings.…”

Advances in field-based high-throughput photosynthetic phenotyping

“…Following Keller et al (2019 a ), Keller et al (2019 b ) showed that the LIFT-based parameters could help quantify photosynthetic variations induced by various environment conditions and detect subtle differences in photosynthetic performance among 28 genotypes of four crop species. The operating efficiency of PSII and the kinetics of ETR, as provided through the LIFT approach, can facilitate the assessment of genetic variation in photosynthetic traits in durum wheat under drought conditions ( Zendonadi dos Santos et al , 2021 ). In addition, LIFT fluorometry has also been used onboard airborne sensing platforms, allowing simultaneous assessment of photosynthetic efficiency and GPP ( Ounis et al , 2016 ) for plant phenotyping.…”

“…Recently, Choquette et al (2019) found that photosynthetic capacity estimated from hyperspectral techniques had a lower heritability than direct measures of photosynthesis using a gas exchange analyzer. In another study, Zendonadi dos Santos et al (2021) found that LIFT techniques detected chlorophyll fluorescence differences between durum genotypes which may be strong enough to use for genome-wide association study (GWAS) analysis. Greater efforts are needed to make multiple repeated measurements of the same plot to demonstrate the limitations of different HTP techniques and methods.…”

“…Other proximal HTP techniques have similar time constraints. Plot-level measurements of chlorophyll fluorescence were captured on ~220 accessions of wheat using LIFT ( Zendonadi dos Santos et al , 2021 ). Those data were collected at an average speed of 8 cm s –1 .…”