High Throughput Crop Phenotyping

This book provides an overview of the innovations in crop phenotyping using emerging technologies, i.e., high-throughput crop phenotyping technology, including its concept, importance, breakthrough and applications in different crops and environments. Emerging technologies in sensing, machine vision and high-performance computing are changing the world beyond our imagination. They are also becoming the most powerful driver of the innovation in agriculture technology, including crop breeding, genetics and management. It includes the state of the art of technologies in high-throughput phenotyping, including advanced sensors, automation systems, ground-based or aerial robotic systems. It also discusses the emerging technologies of big data processing and analytics, such as advanced machine learning and deep learning technologies based on high-performance computing infrastructure. The applications cover different organ levels (root, shoot and seed) of different crops (grains, soybean, maize, potato) at different growth environments (open field and controlled environments). With the contribution of more than 20 world-leading researchers in high-throughput crop phenotyping, the authors hope this book provides readers the needed information to understand the concept, gain the insides and create the innovation of high-throughput phenotyping technology.

This volume looks at a collection of the latest techniques used to quantify the genome-by-environment-by-management (GxExM) interactions in a variety of model and plant crops. The chapters in this book are organized into five parts. Part One discusses high-throughput plant phenotyping (HTPP) protocols for plants growing under controlled conditions. Part Two present novel algorithms for extracting data from seed images, color analysis from fruits, and other digital readouts from 2D objects. Part Three covers molecular imaging protocols using PET and X-ray approaches, and Part Four presents a collection of HTPP techniques for crops growing under field conditions. The last part focuses on molecular analysis, metabolomics, network analysis, and statistical methods for the quantitative genetic analysis of HTP data. Written in the highly successful Methods in Molecular Biology series format, chapters include introductions to their respective topics, lists of the necessary materials and reagents, step-by-step, readily reproducible laboratory protocols, and tips on troubleshooting and avoiding known pitfalls. Cutting-edge and practical, High-Throughput Plant Phenotyping: Review and Protocols is a valuable resource for both novice and expert researchers looking to learn more about this important field. Chapter 21 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

Plant phenotyping is the thorough assessment of plant traits such as growth, development, adaptation, yield, quality, tolerance, resistance, architecture, and the basic measurement of individual quantitative parameters that form the basis for understanding of traits. Genetic approaches to understand plant growth and development have always benefitted from phenotyping techniques that are simple, rapid and measurable in units. The forward genetics approach is all about understanding the trait inheritance using the phenotypic data and in most cases it is the mutant phenotypes that formed the basis for understanding of gene functions. With rapid advancement of genotyping techniques, high throughput genotyping has become a reality at costs people never imagined to be that low, but the phenotypic methods did not receive same attention. However, without quality phenotyping data the genotyping data cannot be effectively put to use in plant improvement. Therefore efforts are underway to develop high-throughput phenotyping methods in plants to keep pace with revolutionary advancement in genotyping techniques to enhance the efficiency of crop improvement programs. Keeping this in mind, we described in this book the best phenomic tools available for trait improvement in some of the world’s most important crop plants.

This Research Topic is part of the High-Throughput Field Phenotyping to Advance Precision Agriculture and Enhance Genetic Gain series. The discipline of “High Throughput Field Phenotyping” (HTFP) has gained momentum in the last decade. HTFP includes a wide range of disciplines such as plant science, agronomy, remote sensing, and genetics; as well as biochemistry, imaging, computation, agricultural engineering, and robotics. High throughput technologies have substantially increased our ability to monitor and quantify field experiments and breeding nurseries at multiple scales. HTFP technology can not only rapidly and cost-effectively replace tedious and subjective ratings in the field, but can also unlock the potential of new, latent phenotypes representing underlying biological function. These advances have also provided the ability to follow crop growth and development across seasons at high and previously inaccessible spatial and temporal resolutions. By combining these data with measurements of all environmental factors affecting plant growth and yield (“Envirotyping”), genotypic-specific reaction norms and phenotypic plasticity may be elucidated.

Plant phenotyping is an emerging technology that involves the quantitative analysis of structural and functional plant traits. However, it is widely recognised that phenotyping needs to match similar advances in genetics if it is to not create a bottleneck in plant breeding. Advances in plant phenotyping for more sustainable crop production reviews the wealth of research on advances in plant phenotyping to meet this challenge, such as the development of new technologies including hyperspectral sensors such as LIDAR, NIR/SWIR, as well as alternative delivery/carrier systems, such as ground-based proximal distance systems and UAVs. The book details the development of plant phenotyping as a technique to analyse crop roots and functionality, as well as its use in understanding and improving crop response to biotic and abiotic stresses.

Genetic approaches to understanding plant growth and development have always benefitted from screens that are simple, quantitative and rapid. Visual screens and morphometric analysis have yielded a plethora of interesting mutants and traits that have provided insight into complex regulatory pathways, and yet many genes within any given plant genome remain undefined. The premise underlying High Throughput Phenotyping in Plants: Methods and Protocols is that the higher the resolution of the phenotype analysis the more likely that new genes and complex interactions will be revealed. The methods described in this volume can be generally classified as quantitative profiling of cellular components, ranging from ions to small molecule metabolites and nuclear DNA, or image capture that ranges in resolution from chlorophyll fluorescence from leaves and time-lapse images of seedling shoots and roots to individual plants within a population at a field site. Written in the successful Methods in Molecular BiologyTM series format, chapters include introductions to their respective topics, lists of the necessary materials and reagents, step-by-step, readily reproducible protocols, and notes on troubleshooting and avoiding known pitfalls. Authoritative and easily accessible, High Throughput Phenotyping in Plants: Methods and Protocols serves as an invaluable guide to plant researchers and all scientists who wish to better understand plant growth and development.