Genome-Wide Association Study and Genomic Selection of Sorghum bicolor Biomass Traits using High-Precision Drone-Based Phenotyping

The Consortium for Advanced Sorghum Phenomics (CASP) is a large, inter-disciplinary DOE-funded project with the goal of accelerating the breeding of biomass sorghum adapted to drought stress conditions. Over the summer of 2016, 622 diverse, public, Sorghum bicolor conversion lines and 26 proprietary sorghum cultivars provided by Chromatin Inc. were grown in two locations in central California under well-watered, pre-flowering drought stress, and post-flowering drought stress conditions. All plots were phenotyped weekly for biomass, leaf area, and growth rate by Blue River Technologies using a drone-based phenotyping platform. Hand phenotyping of randomly selected sub-plots was performed as a benchmark for the drone-collected data. Conventional phenotyping for additional traits including flowering time and grain yield was also performed. Genotyping-by-sequencing of the 648 sorghum lines was performed by the DOE Joint Genome Institute. We present here an update on the current status of the project and modeling relating the GBS data to the drone-generated high resolution phenotype data.