Growing food crops to meet global demand and the search for more sustainable cropping systems are increasing the need for new cultivars in key production areas. This study presents the identification of rice traits putatively producing the largest yield benefits in five areas that markedly differ in terms of environmental conditions in the Philippines, India, China, Japan and Italy. The ecophysiological model WARM and sensitivity analysis techniques were used to evaluate phenotypic traits involved with light interception, photosynthetic efficiency, tolerance to abiotic stressors, resistance to fungal pathogens and grain quality. The analysis involved only model parameters that have a close relationship with phenotypic traits breeders are working on, to increase the in vivo feasibility of selected ideotypes. Current climate and future projections were considered, in the light of the resources required by breeding programs and of the role of weather variables in the identification of promising traits. Results suggest that breeding for traits involved with disease resistance, and tolerance to cold- and heat-induced spikelet sterility could provide benefits similar to those obtained from the improvement of traits involved with canopy structure and photosynthetic efficiency. In contrast, potential benefits deriving from improved grain quality traits are restricted by weather variability and markedly affected by G × E interactions. For this reason, district-specific ideotypes were identified using a new index accounting for both their productivity and feasibility.
The ERMES agro-monitoring system for rice cultivations integrates EO data at different resolutions, crop models and user-provided in-situ data in a unified system which drives two operational downstream services for rice monitoring. The first is aimed at providing information concerning the behaviour of the current season at regional/rice district scale, while the second is dedicated to provide farmers with field-scale data useful to support more efficient and environmentally-friendly crop practices. In this contribution, we describe the main characteristics of the system, in terms of overall architecture, technological solutions adopted, characteristics of the developed products and functionalities provided to end-users. Peculiarities of the system reside in its ability to cope with the needs of different stakeholders within a common platform, and in a tight integration between EO data processing and information retrieval, crop modelling, in situ data collection and information dissemination. The ERMES system has been operationally tested in three European rice-producing countries (Italy, Spain and Greece) during growing seasons 2015 and 2016, providing a great amount of NRT information concerning rice crops. Highlights of significant results are provided, with particular focus on real-world applications of ERMES products and services. Although developed with focus on European rice cultivations, solutions implemented in the ERMES system can be, and are already being, adapted to other crops
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.