Chapter 13 - Crop Phenomics for Abiotic Stress Tolerance in Crop Plants

Abstract

The increasing demand for food, combined with the rapidly increasing global population, rings the alarm bell in light of decreasing natural resources and the increasing trend of climate variability. Thus, 21st-century food production systems are facing the daunting task of developing abiotic stress-tolerant crops with higher and more stable yields to ensure food and nutritional security. Irrespective of the step-wise selection procedure in breeding programs, high-throughput phenotyping is the key for ensuring quantity and quality of data. In conventional breeding, phenotyping offers reliable selection and identification of improved progenies for predicted traits. Similarly, in molecular breeding, phenotyping helps in delineating the association between genotype and phenotype and identification of possible genomic regions for forward genetics. In-depth knowledge of the plant's stress response is therefore of utmost importance. Therefore, by linking phenotyping to different omics techniques, one can fill the gap between gene response and complex targeted traits for crop improvement programs. Recent advances in automated high-throughput and imaging technologies provide high-resolution images and phenomic data for plants. Subsequently, disentangling this huge array of data requires specific tools to make practical decisions. In this chapter we provide an overview of: (i) techniques used to elucidate plant phenomes, (ii) phenotypic changes under different abiotic stresses and (iii) the application of phenomics in providing abiotic stress tolerance in plants. We conclude that plant phenotyping using technology automation can act as a precise tool for in-depth knowledge and characterization of plant stress responses under field conditions.