Campus Units
Agronomy, Horticulture
Document Type
Article
Publication Version
Published Version
Publication Date
2018
Journal or Book Title
PloS ONE
Volume
13
Issue
6
First Page
e0198546
DOI
10.1371/journal.pone.0198546
Abstract
The development of high-yielding crops with drought tolerance is necessary to increase food, feed, fiber and fuel production. Methods that create similar environmental conditions for a large number of genotypes are essential to investigate plant responses to drought in gene discovery studies. Modern facilities that control water availability for each plant remain cost-prohibited to some sections of the research community. We present an alternative cost-effective automated irrigation system scalable for a high-throughput and controlled dry-down treatment of plants. This system was tested in sorghum using two experiments. First, four genotypes were subjected to ten days of dry-down to achieve three final Volumetric Water Content (VWC) levels: drought (0.10 and 0.20 m3 m-3) and control (0.30 m3 m-3). The final average VWC was 0.11, 0.22, and 0.31 m3 m-3, respectively, and significant differences in biomass accumulation were observed between control and drought treatments. Second, 42 diverse sorghum genotypes were subjected to a seven-day dry-down treatment for a final drought stress of 0.15 m3 m-3 VWC. The final average VWC was 0.17 m3 m-3, and plants presented significant differences in photosynthetic rate during the drought period. These results demonstrate that cost-effective automation systems can successfully control substrate water content for each plant, to accurately compare their phenotypic responses to drought, and be scaled up for high-throughput phenotyping studies.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Copyright Owner
Ortiz et al.
Copyright Date
2018
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
Ortiz, Diego; Litvin, Alexander G.; and Salas Fernandez, Maria G., "A cost-effective and customizable automated irrigation system for precise high-throughput phenotyping in drought stress studies" (2018). Agronomy Publications. 573.
https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/agron_pubs/573
Included in
Agriculture Commons, Agronomy and Crop Sciences Commons, Environmental Sciences Commons, Horticulture Commons, Plant Breeding and Genetics Commons
Comments
This article is published as Ortiz D, Litvin AG, Salas Fernandez MG (2018) A cost-effective and customizable automated irrigation system for precise high-throughput phenotyping in drought stress studies. PLoS ONE 13(6): e0198546. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0198546.