High-Throughput Phenotyping Methods for Breeding Drought-Tolerant Crops

Drought is a main factor limiting crop yields. Modern agricultural technologies such as irrigation systems, ground mulching, and rainwater storage can prevent drought, but these are only temporary solutions. Understanding the physiological, biochemical, and molecular reactions of plants to drought stress is therefore urgent. The recent rapid development of genomics tools has led to an increasing interest in phenomics, i.e., the study of phenotypic plant traits. Among phenomic strategies, high-throughput phenotyping (HTP) is attracting increasing attention as a way to address the bottlenecks of genomic and phenomic studies. HTP provides researchers a non-destructive and non-invasive method yet accurate in analyzing large-scale phenotypic data. This review describes plant responses to drought stress and introduces HTP methods that can detect changes in plant phenotypes in response to drought.

Automated summary

Understanding plant responses to drought stress is crucial, and high-throughput phenotyping (HTP) has emerged as a promising method to address the limitations in genomic and phenomic studies. HTP provides researchers with a non-destructive and accurate way to analyze large-scale phenotypic data, making it an increasingly popular tool in studying plant traits.