High Throughput Phenotyping: Framing the Right Research Questions to Generate Relevant Data

Vincent Vadez, Jana Kholova, K Siva Sakhti, M Tharanya, Susan Medina, Srikanth Malayee, Rekha Baddam, Suresh Dharani, Santosh Deshpande, Rakesh Srivastava

For many crops, the genomics revolution has given hope that breeding would become easier and more efficient. Relevant phenotyping is now a main bottleneck and new technologies provide opportunities for easier, faster, more sensitive and more informative phenotyping. Today there is a wealth of new applications to phenotyping, especially around imaging techniques. While the technology now allows many plant parameters to be measured, it is critically important that the development of automated phenotyping tools be driven by scientific questions rather than by a technological push, especially for complex constraints like drought, starting from the proper framing of a target phenotype. We will discuss “cause” and “consequence” in phenotypes, since these can be considered at different level of biological integration and are by definition environment dependent. Previous studies on drought adaptation of dryland crops showed that water availability during the grain filling period was critical for increasing yield and this depended on traits affecting the plant water budget at earlier stages. Drawing on this the thought process behind the development of a phenotyping platform catering for these needs is described. Data generated on that new platform to tackle key phenotypes related to drought and climate change adaptation are presented.