Physiological phenotyping of transpiration response to vapour pressure deficit in wheat

Abstract

Abstract Background Precision phenotyping of short-term transpiration response to environmental conditions and transpiration patterns throughout wheat development enables a better understanding of specific trait compositions that lead to improved transpiration efficiency. Transpiration and related traits were evaluated in a set of 79 winter wheat lines using the custom-built “DroughtSpotter XXL” facility. The 120 l plant growth containers implemented in this phenotyping platform enable gravimetric quantification of water use in real-time under semi-controlled, yet field-like conditions across the entire crop life cycle. Results The resulting high-resolution data enabled identification of significant developmental stage-specific variation for genotype rankings in transpiration efficiency. In addition, for all examined genotypes we identified the genotype-specific breakpoint in transpiration in response to increasing vapour pressure deficit, with breakpoints ranging between 2.75 and 4.1 kPa. Conclusion Continuous monitoring of transpiration efficiency and diurnal transpiration patterns enables identification of hidden, heritable genotypic variation for transpiration traits relevant for wheat under drought stress. Since the unique experimental setup mimics field-like growth conditions, the results of this study have good transferability to field conditions.

Plant phenotyping relevance

カスタム構築したフェノタイピング施設により、蒸散量・水利用・蒸散効率を連続的かつ高解像度に測定する手法とプラットフォームが研究の中心であるため。

Code and data availability

The article describes wheat transpiration/VPD phenotyping in the DroughtSpotter XXL platform, but no paper-specific public dataset, image, code repository, or model deposit is mentioned. The only software references (segmented, lmerTest, emmeans, multcomp) are generic R libraries without author deposit URLs; the sole '

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