Advances in below and above-ground phenotyping More, Better, Faster, Cheaper:  practical needs for improving the rate of genetic gain Advances in below and above-ground phenotyping Vincent Vadez & Team ICRISAT Global Goods – Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation 29 Oct 2014

Lysimetric facility at ICRISAT Functionality Morphology Limitations / Challenges: Capacity/automation (load cells) 3-D in-situ Strengths: Water use efficiency Water extraction at key times Shift in how we look at roots Kinetics of water uptake 2800 “small” PVC / 1600 “large” PVC

Variation for water use efficiency Functionality Sorghum Pearl millet Huge genetic variation Variants used in breeding See Vadez et al 2014

Water extraction at key times Trait dissection Possible Field applications Vegetative Reprod/ Grain fill Early vigor (RGB / NDVI) Conductance Canopy area Canopy T°C Staygreen Sensitive Tolerant Infra Red imaging Less water extraction at vegetative stage, more for grain filling Zaman-Allah et al 2011 See Borrell et al 2014 See Vadez et al 2013 From Deery et al 2014 See Prashar et al 2013

Leaf canopy area and conductance LeasyScan at ICRISAT Capacity: 4,800 plots Throughput: 2,400 plots/hour Traits: LA, Height, Leaf angle, …

Leaf area response to environmental conditions Leaf canopy area Possible Field applications Trait dissection Leaf elongation rate Atmospheric drought Soil drought Lidar scanning TºC + RH % Leaf area Water use Wind + Light Leaf area Leaf area response to environmental conditions From Deery et al 2014 From Welcker et al 2014 See Chapuis et al 2012

Leaf canopy conductance Load Cells Limitations / challenges: Load cells capacity Data management / analysis Strengths: Throughput Meta-data Canopy Scanning + plant transpiration = live water budget

Leaf canopy response to VPD Possible Field applications Trait dissection 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 0.04 0.045 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00 3.50 Evaporative demand (VPD) H77/2 833-2 PRLT-2/89-33 Canopy conductance Infra Red imaging Terminal drought sensitive Water saving Terminal drought tolerant Root anatomy Same in pearl millet: genotypic differences in the Transpiration response to VPD exist and relates well to tolerance/sensitivity to terminal drought Modulate conductance Decrease TR at high VPD Canopy TºC Link to root anatomical differences From Araus and Cairns 2014 From Burton et al 2012

Crop simulation of trait effect on yield Traits targeted to specific zones Chose test locations Here we modified the sowing density in the model and predicted yield for rainfed conditions. The maps represent the yield change (yield at 40 plant/m2 minus yield at 20 plants/m2) The results for WCA shows very clearly that there would be a very large yield benefit of increasing the sowing rate from 20 to 40 plant/m2. Benefit would be small (up to 0.25 t/ha) only in North latitudes (14 and 15 degres North), where there is actually little peanut grown. We could recommend density trials for key locations where benefit are expected to be high Grain yield (g m-2) See Sinclair et al 2010 See Cooper et al 2014

Linking-up the pieces Thank you Trait variability Crop Simulation (Validation) Multi-location testing Trait dissection 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 0.04 0.045 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00 3.50 Evaporative demand (VPD) Canopy conductance Genomics (Genetics) Field phenotyping See Cooper et al 2014 See Lynch et al 2014 See Granier et al 2014 Thank you See Cobb et al 2013