Source: https://phenospex.com/blog/jana-kholova-on-field-phenotyping/
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 01:21:59+00:00

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Can Field Phenotyping improve the livelihood of millions?	Can Field Phenotyping improve the livelihood of millions?
Dr. Jana Kholova describes her reseach at ICRISAT and how we established a unique Field Phenotyping platform together to support the research on crops for the semi-arid tropics.
Within the scope of climate change projections the already harsh conditions for agricultural productions in semi-arid tropics (SAT) would most probably severe. These changes will affect millions of the most vulnerable households living already deeply below the poverty line. One viable option to reverse the inevitable pessimistic future of SAT farming systems is the enhancement of its production and resilience. However, there has been only a marginal progress in this task since last decades because SAT farming systems are characteristic with the most harshest environmental constrains (mainly drought) followed by very low crop production. Maybe for these reasons SAT agro-ecosystems received only limited scientific attention and negligible investments from public-private sector.
Since 2006, the main effort of the research team formed around Dr. V. Vadez at ICRISAT had been focusing on bringing together all possible multidisciplinary means and international expertise to facilitate the improvement of SAT agro-ecosystems (with the main focus on adaptation of cropping systems to drought). Since then a lot of evidence has been accumulated determining the options for agriculture production improvement in the SAT (e.g. Vadez et al. 2009, 2010, 2011a&b, 2012, 2013, 2014; Kholová et al. 2010a&b, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014a&b; Belko et al. 2012; Zaman-Allah et al. 2011a&b; Ratnakumar et al. 2009). One key aspect of this effort includes acceleration of crop improvement efficiency. This requires the accurate definition of the screening criteria relevant for crop production improvement in specific agro-ecologies (precision agriculture, e.g. Vadez et al. 2012; Kholová et al. 2013, 2014). These criteria have been well defined and are basically linked to the physiological mechanisms influencing water use (WU) during the crop cycle (reviewed in Vadez et al. 2013, 2014).
and that all across the crops species, in outdoors conditions and within the short time-intervals.
and overall cost-effectiveness of the all the processes.
Installation of HT-phenotyping platform at ICRISAT in 2013 is clearly the milestone in “research for development” (R&D) approach. The phenotyping concept itself is very unique – i.e. it brings the technology to the plants in the field rather than bringing plants to technology – which finally result in tremendous improvement of phenotyping throughput (currently, the information from 5000 micro-plots can be accessed every 2h along with meteorological data). The analysis of generated phenotypic information should provide the means to bring precision agriculture in practice in a near future. I believe, the rigorous research concepts up-scaled by the highly focused technology-options should lead to improvement of livelihood of millions of households depending on agricultural production in (not only) developing countries.
Belko N, Zaman-Allah M, Cisse N, Diop NN, Zombre G, Ehlers JD,Vadez V. 2012. Lower soil moisture threshold for transpiration decline under water deficit correlates with lower canopy conductance and highertranspiration efficiency in drought-tolerant cowpea. Functional Plant Biology 39, 306–322.
Kholová J, Hash CT, Kakkera A, Kocova M, Vadez V. 2010a. Constitutive water-conserving mechanisms are correlated with the terminal drought tolerance of pearl millet Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R. Br. Journal of Experimental Botany 61, 369–377.
Kholová J, Hash CT, Kumar PL, Yadav RS, Kocova M, Vadez V. 2010b. Terminal drought-tolerant pearl millet Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R. Br. have high leaf ABA and limit transpiration at high vapour pressure deficit. Journal of Experimental Botany 61, 1431–1440.
Ratnakumar P, Vadez V, Nigam SN, Krishnamurthy L. 2009. Assessment of transpiration efficiency in peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.) under drought using a lysimetric system. Plant Biology 11, 124–130.
Vadez V, Deshpande SP, Kholová J, Hammer GL, Borrell AK, Talwar HS, Hash CT. 2011a. Stay-green quantitative trait loci’s effects on water extraction, transpiration efficiency and seed yield depend on recipient parent background. Functional Plant Biology 38, 553–566.
Vadez V, Krishnamurthy L, Hash CT, Upadhyaya HD, Borrell AK. 2011b. Yield, transpiration efficiency, and water-use variations and their interrelationships in the sorghum reference collection. Crop & Pasture Science 62, 645–655.
Vadez V, Kholová J, Zaman-Allah M, Belko N. 2014a. Water: the most important “molecular” component of water stress tolerance research. Functional Plant Biology 40, 1310–1322.
Zaman-Allah M, Jenkinson DM, Vadez V. 2011a. Chickpea genotypes contrasting for seed yield under terminal drought stress in the field differ for traits related to the control of water use. Functional Plant Biology 38, 270–281.
Zaman-Allah M, Jenkinson DM, Vadez V. 2011b. A conservative pattern of water use, rather than deep or profuse rooting, is critical for the terminal drought tolerance of chickpea. Journal of Experimental Botany 62, 4239–4252.
Kholová J, Nepolean T, Hash CT, Supriya A, Rajaram V, Senthilvel S, Kakkera A, Yadav RS, VadezV (2012) Water saving traits co-map with a major terminal drought tolerance quantitative trait locus in pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R.Br.) Molecular Breeding 30, 1337–1353.
Kholová J, Hash CT, Kocová M, Vadez V. 2011. Does the control of reactive oxygen species matter for the terminal drought tolerance of pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R.Br.)? Environmental and Experimental Botany 71, 99–106.
Jana did her graduate studies and PhD in Plant Genetics & Physiology in the Dept. of Genetics and Microbiology at Charles University in Prague (Czech Republic). Besides her passionate love for stone frogs, Jana is working as a scientist at ICRISAT in Andrah Pradesh (India) in the team of Dr. Vincent Vadez where she works since 2009. ICRISAT is a non-profit, non-political organization that conducts agricultural research for development in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. ICRISAT and its partners help empower the poor people to overcome poverty, hunger and a degraded environment through better agriculture. It belongs to the Consortium of Centers supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). Jana’s work at ICRISAT is focusing on plant stress physiology, genetics and modelling exploting various field phenotyping technologies.
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