Development of Field Based High-Throughput Phenotyping Cotton for Drought Tolerance

Working group session: 
Germplasm and Genetic Stocks
Presentation type: 
poster
Authors: 
Harvey, Lorin; Hague, Steve ; Terhune, Austin
Presenter: 
Harvey, Lorin
Correspondent: 
Hague, Steve ; Terhune, Austin
Abstract: 
Improvement of drought tolerance is one of the greatest needs of the cotton industry, but also one of the most challenging of all breeding objectives. Studies at Texas A&M University have focused on inter-relating measurable drought related traits within the context of genotype differences. Traits of interest included seedling drought mortality, root architecture and biomass, leaf temperature, normalized difference vegetative index, stomatal conductance, chlorophyll concentration, image analysis, lint yield, and fiber qualities. The strategy to our approach was to determine drought-related traits that could be efficiently measured and converted to high-throughput phenotyping systems in field conditions. Such a system would enable field phenotyping on a scale that could accompany the rapid advances in genotyping technologies therefore creating and applying a field-based phenomics approach to cotton breeding programs.