TY - JOUR
T1 - Back to the future for drought tolerance
AU - Guadarrama-Escobar, Luis M.
AU - Hunt, James
AU - Gurung, Allison
AU - Zarco-Tejada, Pablo J.
AU - Shabala, Sergey
AU - Camino, Carlos
AU - Hernandez, Pilar
AU - Pourkheirandish, Mohammad
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Authors New Phytologist © 2024 New Phytologist Foundation.
PY - 2024/4
Y1 - 2024/4
N2 - Global agriculture faces increasing pressure to produce more food with fewer resources. Drought, exacerbated by climate change, is a major agricultural constraint costing the industry an estimated US$80 billion per year in lost production. Wild relatives of domesticated crops, including wheat (Triticum spp.) and barley (Hordeum vulgare L.), are an underutilized source of drought tolerance genes. However, managing their undesirable characteristics, assessing drought responses, and selecting lines with heritable traits remains a significant challenge. Here, we propose a novel strategy of using multi-trait selection criteria based on high-throughput spectral images to facilitate the assessment and selection challenge. The importance of measuring plant capacity for sustained carbon fixation under drought stress is explored, and an image-based transpiration efficiency (iTE) index obtained via a combination of hyperspectral and thermal imaging, is proposed. Incorporating iTE along with other drought-related variables in selection criteria will allow the identification of accessions with diverse tolerance mechanisms. A comprehensive approach that merges high-throughput phenotyping and de novo domestication is proposed for developing drought-tolerant prebreeding material and providing breeders with access to gene pools containing unexplored drought tolerance mechanisms.
AB - Global agriculture faces increasing pressure to produce more food with fewer resources. Drought, exacerbated by climate change, is a major agricultural constraint costing the industry an estimated US$80 billion per year in lost production. Wild relatives of domesticated crops, including wheat (Triticum spp.) and barley (Hordeum vulgare L.), are an underutilized source of drought tolerance genes. However, managing their undesirable characteristics, assessing drought responses, and selecting lines with heritable traits remains a significant challenge. Here, we propose a novel strategy of using multi-trait selection criteria based on high-throughput spectral images to facilitate the assessment and selection challenge. The importance of measuring plant capacity for sustained carbon fixation under drought stress is explored, and an image-based transpiration efficiency (iTE) index obtained via a combination of hyperspectral and thermal imaging, is proposed. Incorporating iTE along with other drought-related variables in selection criteria will allow the identification of accessions with diverse tolerance mechanisms. A comprehensive approach that merges high-throughput phenotyping and de novo domestication is proposed for developing drought-tolerant prebreeding material and providing breeders with access to gene pools containing unexplored drought tolerance mechanisms.
KW - de novo domestication
KW - high-throughput imaging
KW - stomata
KW - transpiration efficiency
KW - water use efficiency
KW - wild relatives
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85186853137&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/nph.19619
DO - 10.1111/nph.19619
M3 - Comment/debate
C2 - 38429882
AN - SCOPUS:85186853137
SN - 0028-646X
VL - 242
SP - 372
EP - 383
JO - New Phytologist
JF - New Phytologist
IS - 2
ER -