Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 11, 2026
06:41
Imaging and Analysis for Quantifying Maize (Zea mays) Abiotic Stress Phenotypes
Published on: March 28, 2025
Phenotypic approaches to drought in cassava: review
Emmanuel Okogbenin1, Tim L Setter, Morag Ferguson
1Cassava Program/Biotechnology Program, National Root Crop Research Institute Umudike, Abia, Nigeria.
Frontiers in Physiology
|May 30, 2013
Summary
Developing drought-tolerant cassava varieties is crucial for food security. This study proposes early-growth phase phenotyping traits to accelerate breeding cycles for improved cassava drought tolerance.
Area of Science:
- Agricultural Science
- Plant Breeding
- Genetics
Background:
- Cassava is a vital food security crop, especially in marginal environments prone to drought.
- While cassava possesses natural drought tolerance, genetic improvement is needed to enhance productivity under water-scarce conditions.
- Conventional breeding for drought tolerance is slow due to the complex, multigenic nature of the trait and cassava's long growth cycle.
Purpose of the Study:
- To identify and highlight modified traits for early-growth phase phenotyping in cassava.
- To propose strategies for reducing the phenotyping cycle in breeding for drought tolerance.
- To accelerate the development of improved, drought-tolerant cassava varieties.
Main Methods:
- Review of drought adaptation studies and breeding strategies in cassava.
- Analysis of challenges in current phenotyping for drought tolerance, particularly storage root evaluation.
- Identification of potential early-growth phase traits for modified phenotyping.
Main Results:
- Current high-throughput genotyping is not matched by efficient phenotyping for drought adaptation.
- Late-stage phenotyping, especially for storage roots, significantly slows down the selection process.
- Modified traits for early-growth phase phenotyping can complement genotyping to speed up breeding.
Conclusions:
- Accelerating cassava breeding for drought tolerance requires innovative phenotyping strategies.
- Early-growth phase phenotyping traits can significantly shorten breeding cycles.
- Integrating metabolite profiling, advanced phenomics, and high-throughput phenotyping is essential for future genetic gains.
Related Concept Videos
01:57Adaptations that Reduce Water Loss
Though evaporation from plant leaves drives transpiration, it also results in loss of water. Because water is critical for photosynthetic reactions and other cellular processes, evolutionary pressures on plants in different environments have driven the acquisition of adaptations that reduce water loss.
02:41Responses to Drought and Flooding
Water plays a significant role in the life cycle of plants. However, insufficient or excess of water can be detrimental and pose a serious threat to plants.
02:02Responses to Salt Stress
Salt stress—which can be triggered by high salt concentrations in a plant’s environment—can significantly affect plant growth and crop production by influencing photosynthesis and the absorption of water and nutrients.
02:16Light Acquisition
In order to produce glucose, plants need to capture sufficient light energy. Many modern plants have evolved leaves specialized for light acquisition. Leaves can be only millimeters in width or tens of meters wide, depending on the environment. Due to competition for sunlight, evolution has driven the evolution of increasingly larger leaves and taller plants, to avoid shading by their neighbors with contaminant elaboration of root architecture and mechanisms to transport water and nutrients.
02:04Regulation of Transpiration by Stomata
During photosynthesis, plants acquire the necessary carbon dioxide and release the produced oxygen back into the atmosphere. Openings in the epidermis of plant leaves is the site of this exchange of gasses. A single opening is called a stoma—derived from the Greek word for “mouth.” Stomata open and close in response to a variety of environmental cues.
02:45Responses to Heat and Cold Stress
Every organism has an optimum temperature range within which healthy growth and physiological functioning can occur. At the ends of this range, there will be a minimum and maximum temperature that interrupt biological processes.