Image-based phenotyping of a rice diversity panel Argelia Lorence

Image-based phenotyping of a rice diversity panel to identify novel sources of salt tolerance Rice is arguably the most important crop for global food security, but is also the most salt-sensitive among staple cereals. Despite significant yield losses, rice is a good candidate for cultivation in areas prone to coastal flooding due to its ability to tolerate standing water in the field for long periods. These areas are also more prone to the effects of future climatic change. Therefore, there is an urgent need to harness the genetic potential of rice for salinity tolerance. The extent of genetic variation for salt tolerance in rice is largely unknown and under-utilized. Reasons for this knowledge gap had been lack of a tractable rice diversity panel with matching genomic resources, and the inability to precisely phenotype salinity stress responses over time in a high-throughput manner. This work is a collaborative effort between the Walia Laboratory at the University of Nebraska Lincoln and the Lorence Group at Arkansas State University Jonesboro funded by the NSF Plant Genome Program. The Walia team has been studying the salt tolerance of a rice diversity panel at two developmental stages that are particularly susceptible to this stress in greenhouse experiments. Based on their results, a selected group of rice lines including salt tolerant and salt sensitive types as well as positive and negative controls was sent to the Lorence team to study their response to salt stress at the early vegetative growth stage using a Scanalyzer HTS. We have used the visible and fluorescence cameras of the system to quantify the tolerance to salt of over 70 rice accessions grown in hydroponic conditions. I will discuss our progress on the identification and characterization of salt tolerant rice lines.