Phenotyping of Plants for Drought and Salt Tolerance Using Infra-Red Thermography

Abstract

This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ABSTRACT Drought and salinity are the major environmental constrains in global agricultural production. Plant breeding for the drought and salt tolerance needs a proper assessment procedure to overcome stress constrain. Fundamental understanding on the physiological nature of the plant tolerance provides valuable information for the genetically modified crop's development. Drought or salt stress induces several common physiological responses in plants such as water relation and photosynthetic capacitiy. It is because both stresses lead cellular dehydration in the plants, particularly, during the early phase of stress imposition. Drought and salinity decrease CO2 availability for photosynthesis via stomatal limitation as well as elevate leaf temperature due to partially closed stomata. In this scenario, stomatal regulation and plant water status are important aspects in abiotic stress environment. These physiological responses have a function to stabilize the temperature inside plant/leaf. Therefore phenotyping through an infra-red thermography (heat sensitive sensor), could be a useful tool in the selection of a tolerant genotypes. Infra-red thermography is a part of the electromagnetic spectrum which emits a certain amount of radiation as a function of their temperatures. In general, the plants which have less water, would have higher temperature and display more infra-red radiations. In abiotic stresses such as drought and salinity, plant water status is affected and varied from the sensitive to tolerant level. Infra-red images of plants are often linked with some of the physiological attributes to the tolerance. This review covers the limits, advantages, linkages, comparison and other prospectives of using thermal imagaes in modern phenotyping techniques.

Sustainable effect of a symbiotic nitrogen‐fixing bacterium Sinorhizobium meliloti on nodulation and photosynthetic traits of four leguminous plants under low moisture stress environment

“…To resist against abiotic stress, plants must maintain RWC in a substantial level not less than 65% (Kwon et al . 2015). Sinorhizobium meliloti maintains RWC in kidney bean plants under water stress as compared with other species.…”

“…Around 30% productive land is facing serious problems of reduction in crop yield due to water stress (Kwon et al . 2015). Moreover, the area affected by low water content and salinity is still escalating in the world.…”

High-throughput phenotyping platform for analyzing drought tolerance in rice

“…IR thermography is used to analyze the responses of crops to abiotic or biotic stresses (Stoll and Jones 2007 ; James and Sirault 2012 ; Ballester et al 2013 ). Kwon et al investigated the role of IR imaging in the response to stress in a drought-tolerant transgenic line of rice expressing CaMsrB2 (Siddiqui et al 2014 ; Kwon et al 2015 ). In this study, we examined the changes in plant temperature in response to drought stress (Fig.…”

Sensors for measuring plant phenotyping: A review

“…The sensitive spectral band of thermography is 3-14 μm, and the most common wavelengths are 3-5 μm and 7-14 μm [13] . Thermography is able to detect early heat generation in stressed plant, especially, leaf [14] . Thermal images can represent the surface temperature of a plant objectively.…”