Phenotyping complex traits of drought and heat tolerance for future climate-resilient German wheat

中欧的气候变化预计将通过频繁的干旱和极端高温来影响作物的生长条件。小麦在生殖阶段对高温和干旱特别敏感。日益严峻的作物环境和基因技术的快速发展都要求通过高通量表型技术更好地了解作物的生理过程及其与环境的相互作用，从而能够在现实环境中评估育种规模上的复杂性状表达。因此，我们的假设是，为了制定提高德国小麦气候适应性的策略，需要在干旱和温暖的田间条件下进行全面的田间评估，以便通过高通量的性状表型鉴定和从已经适应干旱/高温的小麦品种中挖掘新的遗传资源来提供可靠的抗旱和耐热性状。最终目标是利用高通量表型技术，通过一组具有代表性的德国品种和一组来自东欧的多样化小麦，鉴定冬小麦新的和复杂的耐旱性/耐热性性状。该项目的具体目标是：i)评估德国小麦在摩尔多瓦田间条件下对干旱/高温胁迫的适应性，以便更好地了解干旱/高温相关性状的复杂网络，同时还剖析干旱和高温的影响，利用雨/灌溉条件和根系的作用，以提供可靠的干旱/高温耐性性状；Ii)进一步挖掘具有自然遗传多样性的东欧小麦品种的抗旱/耐热新来源，这对采用德国小麦适应预期的未来气候变化至关重要；iii)开发利用地面和航空光谱/热/数字图像技术对小麦抗旱/耐热的复杂性状进行高通量表型鉴定的技术和算法；iv)结合摩尔多瓦和德国以往和正在进行的试验的信息，确定反映多站点年信息的德国和东欧小麦的抗旱和耐热相关性状。意义：i)评估现有德国小麦品种在未来气候变化生长条件下的表现，确定适应干旱和高温的性状，将有助于制定气候适应性战略；ii)创新的干旱和高温耐性表型鉴定方法将成为有针对性的应用研究的基础；iii)从已经适应的现有东欧小麦品种中鉴定抗旱/耐热性状的遗传变异，从而在育种计划中引入新的遗传资源。

Climate change in Central Europe is expected to influence crop growth conditions through frequent drought and heat extremes. Wheat is particularly sensitive to heat and drought during the reproductive stages. An increasingly challenging crop environment and the rapid advances in genetic technologies both call for a better understanding of the physiological processes and their interaction with the environment through high-throughput phenotyping technologies that permit the evaluation of complex trait expression on a breeding scale in realistic environments. Therefore, our hypothesis is that to develop strategies for climate resilience improvement of German wheat, a comprehensive field evaluation in drier and warmer field conditions is needed in order to provide reliable traits of drought and heat tolerance using high-throughput phenotyping of traits and exploiting new genetic resources from wheat cultivars already adapted to drought/heat. The ultimate objective is to identify novel and complex traits of drought/heat tolerance for winter wheat with a representative panel of German cultivars and a diversified set of wheat from Eastern Europe using high throughput phenotyping technologies. Specific objectives of this project are: i) to assess the adaptation of German wheat to drought/heat stress under Moldovan field conditions for a better understanding of the complex network of drought/heat-related traits by also dissecting the impact of drought and heat using rainfed/irrigated conditions and the role of roots in order to provide reliable traits of drought/heat tolerance; ii) to further exploit new sources of drought/heat tolerance of East-European cultivars with natural genetic diversity, which is of utmost importance to adopt German wheat to the anticipated future climate change, iii) to develop techniques and algorithms for high-throughput phenotyping the complex traits of drought/heat tolerance for wheat using both terrestrial and aerial spectral/thermal/digital imagery techniques; iv) to combine information from previous and on-going experimentation in Moldova and Germany to identify relevant traits of drought and heat tolerance of German and East European wheat reflecting multiple site-year information. Significance: i) Assessing the performance of existing German wheat varieties in future growing conditions of climate change and identifying traits for adaptation to drought and heat will contribute to develop strategies for climate resilience; ii) Innovative approaches for phenotyping the tolerance of drought and heat will form the basis of a targeted and applied research grounding and iii) Identifying genetic variation for the traits of drought/heat tolerance from existing East European wheat cultivars already adapted, thus new genetic resources can be introduced in breeding programs.