Novel techniques identify drought-tolerant roots
New developments in phenomic tools are shedding light on the finer dynamic interactions of crop roots and yield that could boost productivity and drought.
Given that grain production in Australia is mainly limited by water availability, it is rather perplexing how little is known about the rooting system – the most critical plant organ to access soil water and nutrients.
The architecture, anatomy and function of the root system offer untapped opportunities for crop improvement and productivity gains in the grains industry.
However, root traits are hard to measure and the lack of quick, cheap, accurate and functional root phenotyping approaches in the field has limited the capacity of breeding, agronomy and precision agriculture to develop valuable traits and products.
We do know that the crop’s genetic background and the environment (soil, climate, management) interact to alter the architecture of the rooting system, or root phenotype. However, rarely have studies on root architecture been able to relate these differences into valuable information such as differences in root function – and therefore implications for yield, or yield stability in the field.
Lack of success is due to the complexity and limited understanding of the relationship between root form, root function and grain yield. A major bottleneck has been the fact that characterisation of the below-ground parts of crops is laborious, expensive and subject to large errors, as usually only a limited part of the rooting system can be sampled.
Root studies are usually done by growing single plants in pots, root chambers or tubes, or destructively extracting soil samples containing roots from the field. Another problem has been that research appears stubbornly focused on trying to visualise root architecture, ignoring the rather weak and highly variable relationship between root form and root function.
Also, the predominant focus of these approaches has been limited to just measuring the mean value of a trait – for example, rooting depth. This overlooks the fact that the root system is highly responsive to the environment, and that different genotypes show different capacity to adapt to their environment when under stress....
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Grains Research and Development Corporation
#Australia #Agriculture
Leader - CGIAR Global Rice Breeding Program
1moCongratulations and thanks to Dr. Amelia Henry, our esteemed colleague at IRRI for her pioneering work in roots and drought physiology in rice.