Back to the future for drought tolerance

Area of Science:

• Agricultural Science
• Plant Genetics
• Climate Change Adaptation

Background:

• Global agriculture faces increasing pressure to produce more food with limited resources.
• Drought, worsened by climate change, is a major agricultural constraint, causing significant economic losses.
• Wild crop relatives (e.g., wheat, barley) possess valuable drought tolerance genes but are underutilized due to selection challenges.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a novel strategy for assessing and selecting drought tolerance in crops using high-throughput spectral imaging.
• To explore the importance of sustained carbon fixation under drought stress.
• To develop drought-tolerant prebreeding material by merging high-throughput phenotyping and de novo domestication.

Main Methods:

• Utilizing multi-trait selection criteria based on high-throughput spectral images.
• Developing an image-based transpiration efficiency (iTE) index using hyperspectral and thermal imaging.
• Integrating iTE with other drought-related variables for selection.

Main Results:

• The proposed iTE index, combined with other variables, facilitates the identification of accessions with diverse drought tolerance mechanisms.
• High-throughput phenotyping and de novo domestication can be merged for effective prebreeding.
• The strategy addresses challenges in managing undesirable traits and selecting heritable drought tolerance.

Conclusions:

• A novel high-throughput imaging strategy, incorporating an image-based transpiration efficiency (iTE) index, can effectively identify drought-tolerant crop lines.
• This approach facilitates the development of prebreeding material with enhanced drought resilience.
• Leveraging wild crop relatives and advanced phenotyping offers a promising avenue for future crop improvement under drought stress.