High-throughput phenotyping to dissect genotypic differences in safflower for drought tolerance

Abstract

Drought is one of the most severe and unpredictable abiotic stresses, occurring at any growth stage and affecting crop yields worldwide. Therefore, it is essential to develop drought tolerant varieties to ensure sustainable crop production in an ever-changing climate. High-throughput digital phenotyping technologies in tandem with robust screening methods enable precise and faster selection of genotypes for breeding. To investigate the use of digital imaging to reliably phenotype for drought tolerance, a genetically diverse safflower population was screened under different drought stresses at Agriculture Victoria’s high-throughput, automated phenotyping platform, Plant Phenomics Victoria, Horsham. In the first experiment, four treatments, control (90% field capacity; FC), 40% FC at initial branching, 40% FC at flowering and 50% FC at initial branching and flowering, were applied to assess the performance of four safflower genotypes. Based on these results, drought stress using 50% FC at initial branching and flowering stages was chosen to further screen 200 diverse safflower genotypes. Measured plant traits and dry biomass showed high correlations with derived digital traits including estimated shoot biomass, convex hull area, caliper length and minimum area rectangle, indicating the viability of using digital traits as proxy measures for plant growth. Estimated shoot biomass showed close association having moderately high correlation with drought indices yield index, stress tolerance index, geometric mean productivity, and mean productivity. Diverse genotypes were classified into four clusters of drought tolerance based on their performance (seed yield and digitally estimated shoot biomass) under stress. Overall, results show that rapid and precise image-based, high-throughput phenotyping in controlled environments can be used to effectively differentiate response to drought stress in a large numbers of safflower genotypes.

Effects of Genotype and Climatic Conditions on the Oil Content and Its Fatty Acids Composition of Carthamus tinctorius L. Seeds

“…Drought is one of the most severe and unpredictable abiotic stresses, occurring at any growth stage and affecting crop yields [66]. It presents a substantial challenge to the sustainability of agriculture [67].…”

Phenotyping Deficit Moisture Stress Tolerance in Tomato Using Image Derived Digital Features

“…Hence, the genotype, IIHR 2195 showed its uniqueness through its response under water limiting conditions. Joshi et al (2021) shoot biomass was lower as compared to control. The reductions in fresh and dry weights of tomato plants are observed under deficit water stress (Ors et al, 2021) and studies have shown that tomato genotypes exhibit wide variability in drought tolerance (Conti et al, 2019).…”

A Cinnamate 4-HYDROXYLASE1 from Safflower Promotes Flavonoids Accumulation and Stimulates Antioxidant Defense System in Arabidopsis

“…Previous studies have suggested that plant seeds with the C4H mutation lead to a significant decrease in anthocyanins, growth hormones, and lignin in Arabidopsis [ 9 ]. Similarly, the abundance of C4H expression at the transcriptional level and protein level can significantly influence the biosynthesis of aromatic compounds and flavonoids in plants [ 10 , 11 ]. These findings have provided valuable insights towards the importance of C4H in plants that can affect the synthesis and accumulation of flavonoids and phenolic compounds by regulating its expression level along their biosynthetic pathway.…”

“…Drought is considered as one of the most important factors affecting plant growth and yield, having a major impact on gene expression, morphology, metabolic adjustments, and photosynthetic modifications. Several studies have demonstrated that plant growth and development can be hampered by osmotic and oxidative stress, ion deficiencies, and metabolic disturbances when water is scarce [ 11 ]. Similarly, severe water deficiency has a significant negative impact on the growth and development of safflower [ 12 ].…”