Development and evaluation of a field-based high-throughput phenotyping platform

Area of Science:

• Agricultural Science
• Plant Biology
• Genetics

Background:

• Phenotyping dynamic physiological and developmental traits in field conditions is challenging.
• Accurate phenotyping is crucial for understanding plant responses to environmental factors and for crop breeding.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and evaluate a novel field system for phenotyping dynamic traits in cotton.
• To assess the system's ability to measure canopy height, reflectance, and temperature under varying water regimes and times.

Main Methods:

• A new field phenotyping system with four sensor sets was developed.
• The system measured canopy height, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), and temperature in Pima cotton cultivars under well-watered and water-limited conditions.
• Data collection occurred over three days in July and August, with measurements taken at different times.

Main Results:

• The system enabled rapid data collection (0.84 ha/h) and captured significant differences in traits among cotton cultivars and their interactions with water regime and time of day.
• Broad-sense heritability was high for canopy height (0.86–0.96), moderate for NDVI (0.28–0.90), and variable for temperature (0.01–0.90).
• The system's measurements showed strong agreement with aerial imagery and manual phenotyping (r²=0.35–0.82).

Conclusions:

• The developed phenotyping system accurately and rapidly measures multiple dynamic traits in field-grown cotton.
• This technology has the potential to significantly advance crop phenotyping for breeding and physiological studies.
• The system's ability to differentiate cultivars and assess environmental interactions is valuable for agricultural research.