High-Throughput Phenotyping of Drought-Adaptive Traits in Cotton

The development of superior heat tolerant and water-use efficient cotton cultivars has been slowed by the polygenic inheritance and low heritability, and time-dependence of adaptive traits in stress environments. Moreover, there is limited knowledge of the key genes that underpin physiological and biochemical traits that relate to improved productivity under high temperatures and water deficit. To that end, we developed a field-based, high-throughput phenotyping (HTP) system for studying adaptive traits that are potentially important for increased cotton fiber yield and quality in the southwestern United States. We tested these approaches on a cotton recombinant inbred line (RIL) population (TM-1×NM24016) grown under replicated well-watered and water-deficit treatments in Arizona. We present results from a statistical genetic analysis of canopy temperature, reflectance, and height data that were collected with tractor-mounted sensors and suggest how powerful modern plant breeding tools can be leveraged in the genetic improvement of cotton.