Opportunities and limits of controlled-environment plant phenotyping for climate response traits

TL;DR

This paper reviews how controlled-environment facilities help study plant responses to climate stress, aiding crop breeding for future conditions.

Contribution

The paper systematically outlines the potential and limitations of controlled-environment phenotyping for climate response traits.

Findings

Controlled-environment phenotyping allows detailed and repeatable measurement of plant traits under simulated climate stress.

Extrapolating results from controlled environments to field conditions remains a significant challenge.

These facilities support breeding programs by identifying genotypes adapted to future climate scenarios.

Abstract

Rising temperatures and changing precipitation patterns will affect agricultural production substantially, exposing crops to extended and more intense periods of stress. Therefore, breeding of varieties adapted to the constantly changing conditions is pivotal to enable a quantitatively and qualitatively adequate crop production despite the negative effects of climate change. As it is not yet possible to select for adaptation to future climate scenarios in the field, simulations of future conditions in controlled-environment (CE) phenotyping facilities contribute to the understanding of the plant response to special stress conditions and help breeders to select ideal genotypes which cope with future conditions. CE phenotyping facilities enable the collection of traits that are not easy to measure under field conditions and the assessment of a plant‘s phenotype under repeatable, clearly defined environmental conditions using automated, non-invasive, high-throughput methods. However, extrapolation and translation of results obtained under controlled environments to field environments is ambiguous. This review outlines the opportunities and challenges of phenotyping approaches under controlled environments complementary to conventional field trials. It gives an overview on general principles and introduces existing phenotyping facilities that take up the challenge of obtaining reliable and robust phenotypic data on climate response traits to support breeding of climate-adapted crops.

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