Articles
Lettuce reaction to drought stress: automated high-throughput phenotyping of plant growth and photosynthetic performance
Article number
1268_17
Pages
133 – 142
Language
English
Abstract
The unavailability of fresh water is one of the main concerns for horticulture nowadays and it is supposed to get worse in the coming future.
Some crops are more vulnerable than others to drought stress such as leafy vegetables.
It is therefore essential to identify and select cultivars that can overcome this kind of abiotic stress with limited or no substantial reduction in final yield, and to do it in a fast and effective way.
High throughput phenotyping combined with advances in genome sequences provide efficient and reproducible approaches that are facilitating the discovery of genes and cultivars with improved plant performance under sub-optimal conditions.
Drought resistance of two different Salanova® cultivars, Aquino (green butterhead) and Barlach (red butterhead), was tested, by using PlantScreen, a high-throughput non-invasive imaging platform developed at Photon Systems Instruments (PSI, Czech Republic). The two cultivars performed similarly in both control (70% soil water content) and mild drought stress conditions (40% soil water content). The results demonstrated that Aquino grew faster in control conditions at early growth phase, while in later phase it is the red Barlach that reached larger biomass.
In drought conditions growth performance of both cultivars was rapidly compromised.
However, Barlach grew better and had improved biomass in both control and mild-drought stress conditions in comparison with Aquino. Light curve protocol was used to address light use efficiency of the two cultivars.
Interestingly, we observed a rapid decline in PS II operating efficiency already three days upon mild drought stress initiation.
Nevertheless, there was no obvious difference in the performances between the two cultivars.
In conclusion, the results of quantitative analysis of plant growth and photosynthetic performance, allowed to set up a protocol for high-throughput image-based analysis of different morpho-physiological traits associated with the early phase of drought response.
Some crops are more vulnerable than others to drought stress such as leafy vegetables.
It is therefore essential to identify and select cultivars that can overcome this kind of abiotic stress with limited or no substantial reduction in final yield, and to do it in a fast and effective way.
High throughput phenotyping combined with advances in genome sequences provide efficient and reproducible approaches that are facilitating the discovery of genes and cultivars with improved plant performance under sub-optimal conditions.
Drought resistance of two different Salanova® cultivars, Aquino (green butterhead) and Barlach (red butterhead), was tested, by using PlantScreen, a high-throughput non-invasive imaging platform developed at Photon Systems Instruments (PSI, Czech Republic). The two cultivars performed similarly in both control (70% soil water content) and mild drought stress conditions (40% soil water content). The results demonstrated that Aquino grew faster in control conditions at early growth phase, while in later phase it is the red Barlach that reached larger biomass.
In drought conditions growth performance of both cultivars was rapidly compromised.
However, Barlach grew better and had improved biomass in both control and mild-drought stress conditions in comparison with Aquino. Light curve protocol was used to address light use efficiency of the two cultivars.
Interestingly, we observed a rapid decline in PS II operating efficiency already three days upon mild drought stress initiation.
Nevertheless, there was no obvious difference in the performances between the two cultivars.
In conclusion, the results of quantitative analysis of plant growth and photosynthetic performance, allowed to set up a protocol for high-throughput image-based analysis of different morpho-physiological traits associated with the early phase of drought response.
Authors
M. Sorrentino, G. Colla, Y. Rouphael, K. Panzarová, M. Trtílek
Keywords
Lactuca sativa L., Salanova®, high-throughput phenotyping, mild-drought stress
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