Scaling up high-throughput phenotyping for abiotic stress selection in the field

Comparison of Drought and Heat Resistance Strategies among Six Populations of Solanum chilense and Two Cultivars of Solanum lycopersicum

“…Abiotic stresses caused by environmental factors can affect the growth and development of crops with consequent decreases of crop yields and quality [33,34]. In cultivated tomato, abiotic stress causes about 70% yield loss, depending upon the plant stage and duration of the stress [35].…”

Can We Harness “Enviromics” to Accelerate Crop Improvement by Integrating Breeding and Agronomy?

“…There have been many calls for enhanced attention to environmental characterization to accelerate crop improvement. Plant breeders have long sought environmental definitions and covariates to assist interpretation of plant responses and the GxE interactions detected in METs and to understand their relevance for the on-farm TPE (Finlay and Wilkinson, 1963;Allard and Bradshaw, 1964;Baker, 1988;Blum, 1988;Cooper and Hammer, 1996;Boer et al, 2007;Heslot et al, 2014;Jarquín et al, 2014;Pauli et al, 2016;Xu, 2016;Ly et al, 2018;Bustos-Korts et al, 2019Millet et al, 2019;Costa-Neto et al, 2020Porker et al, 2020;Crossa et al, 2021;Li et al, 2021;Resende et al, 2021;Smith et al, 2021). The role of water availability and impact of drought on crop yield and investigations to determine the traits contributing to crop productivity under drought conditions have received significant attention from breeders (e.g., Blum, 1988;Fukai and Cooper, 1995;Campos et al, 2004;Bänziger et al, 2006;Ribaut, 2006;Messina et al, 2011Messina et al, , 2018Cooper et al, 2014a), agronomists (French and Schultz, 1984;Sadras and Angus, 2006;Kirkegaard and Hunt, 2010;Van Ittersum et al, 2013;Hunt et al, 2021), and physiologists (Richards and Passioura, 1989;Ludlow and Muchow, 1990;…”

“…Sustainable improvement of on-farm crop yield productivity, through improving yield potential and yield stability, is a complex long-term objective for both breeders and agronomists (Duvick et al, 2004;Hall and Richards, 2013;Fischer et al, 2014;Hatfield and Walthall, 2015;Beres et al, 2020;Cooper et al, 2021;Hunt et al, 2021). Heterogeneity of current environmental conditions that impact crop yield and the influences of climate change continually challenge the definition of the Target Population of Environments (TPE) for both breeders and agronomists (Chapman et al, 2012;Harrison et al, 2014;Lobell et al, 2015;Voss-Fels et al, 2019;Hammer et al, 2020;Cooper et al, 2021;Smith et al, 2021). Many of the important environmental details required for interpretation of experimental results and to enable prediction of genotype reaction-norms are not currently captured routinely for the multi-environment trials (METs) conducted by breeders and agronomists.…”

“…Further, for most crop breeding programs the relationships between the environments sampled in METs and the dominant environmental conditions of the TPE are neither well understood nor adequately quantified (Cooper and DeLacy, 1994;Cooper et al, 2021). Improved sensor technologies and prediction methodologies are urgently required to characterize and study environments within breeding and agronomy METs and to quantify the relationships between the environments sampled in METs for all stages of crop improvement programs and their importance for the TPE (Messina et al, 2020;Crespo-Herrera et al, 2021;Kusmec et al, 2021;Potgieter et al, 2021;Smith et al, 2021).…”

“…Farmers seek improved technology combinations based on genotypes and agronomic management that can consistently deliver yield productivity close to the potential of their on-farm environments, while managing the risk of crop failure (Hammer et al, 2014;Hunt et al, 2021). As a constructive step toward improving the predictability of on-farm crop productivity, there has been continual refinement of the definition of environments in METs and the agricultural TPE to recognize the important role of crop management and for investigation of the influences of genotype-by-environmentby-management (GxExM) interactions (Kirkegaard and Hunt, 2010;Hammer et al, 2014Hammer et al, , 2020Hatfield and Walthall, 2015;Beres et al, 2020;Peng et al, 2020;Cooper et al, 2021;Hunt et al, 2021;Potgieter et al, 2021;Smith et al, 2021). Thus, we can study genetic improvements from the perspective of the breeder, crop management improvements from the perspective of the agronomist, and improvement in genotypemanagement technology combinations from the perspective of the farmer.…”