Oral: Promising Phenotyping Efforts for Understanding Genetic and Molecular Bases of Plant Disease Resistance
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Field-based phenomics for stress detection: an overview.
J. WHITE (1), M. Newcomb (2), P. Andrade-Sanchez (3) (1) Arid-Land Agricultural Research Center, Maricopa, AZ, U.S.A.; (2) University of Arizona, Maricopa, AZ, U.S.A.; (3) Agricultural & Biosystems Engineering, University of Arizona, Maricopa, AZ, U.S.A
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Many crop stress and disease responses are best studied in field environments where soil, microclimatic and stress conditions are directly relevant to commercial production. However, evaluating plant populations large enough to permit meaningful genetic analyses presents challenges for accurate phenotyping. In research on drought, heat and to a limited extent, plant diseases, our group in Maricopa, AZ is developing phenotyping systems that use proximal sensing to achieve desired levels of accuracy and throughput. A typical configuration consists of four sets of ultrasonic height sensors, infrared thermometers and multi-band reflectance sensors that are connected to a datalogger operating at 5 Hz and a GPS that georeferences the sensor data with less than 5 cm positional error. Tractors and hand carts are used as vehicles. The systems have been deployed in cotton, wheat, oil-seeds, common bean, melons and sunflower. Recognizing multiple limitations of ground vehicles, work is underway with unmanned aerial vehicles and with a gantry crane-based robotic system. Results from cotton, wheat, cantaloupe and common bean are presented to illustrate the multiple options and challenges both in deploying sensors and analyzing the data.