Does root plasticity contribute to crop tolerance to abiotic stresses?

Poster that presents the experiments, the main results and take home messages

A novel phenotyping pipeline for root system architecture : evaluation with diversity panels of bread and durum wheat

Plant root systems are responsible for the capture of soil water and minerals essential for their growth. With the need to reduce fertiliser use and improve resilience to extreme climate events, improving resource capture efficiency has become a hot topic in agriculture. This includes optimising root distribution in soils via appropriate root system architecture and growth. Root systems are often described using integrative variables, e.g. number and biomass, that are cost-effective but provide limited cues on root distribution. Modelling studies have shown that root systems can also be described using process variables, depicting growth and development processes. These are expected to be more closely connected to the underlying biology than the integrative variables and to lead more directly to optimisation paths. In this thesis, we created a novel high-throughput phenotyping pipeline of plants grown in aeroponics. This pipeline exploits high spatial and temporal resolution image series to estimate process variables from simple morphologic features, with very limited computing resources. It was used to analyse the genetic architecture of process and integrative variables on diversity panels of bread and durum wheat (500 genotypes) and was evaluated against independent experiments (pouches, rhizotubes and field). We demonstrated that process information can be estimated easily from simple morphologic features if dense time series are available. We also showed that lateral root formation, despite being highly variable along the root system, can be constant when cumulated at the whole plant level. Cross-experiment validation revealed that genotypic differences for process variables were largely environment-specific. Finally, the genetic architecture of process variables was not found to be simpler than that of the integrative ones.(AGRO - Sciences agronomiques et ingénierie biologique) -- UCL, 202

New Pipeline enabling high-throughput phenotyping of dynamic root traits in bread and durum wheat

Over the last years, high throughput phenotyping has become increasingly popular in plant biology and breeding. But, root phenotyping has been progressing at a slower pace, mainly due to observation constraints, but also because root scientists are still not unanimous on how to represent root system morphology. Our group has developed a root phenotyping installation that allows us to evaluate root morphology at high spatial and temporal resolutions. The platform has required throughput for modern genetic quantitative experiments, it captures images that simplified segmentation and with the very high spatial and temporal resolution, it can yield quantitative root information in many different formalisms (model parameters, tracing, densities, shapes...

Root architecture phenotypes in bread and durum wheat

The SolACE project is seeking for improved management of below-ground processes in agriculture. Roots play significant roles in water and nitrogen extraction and in the adaptation to stresses coming with changing environments. In order to explore the possibilities of manipulating root architecture through breeding, we have phenotyped diversity panels of bread and durum wheat using a high-throughput semi-controlled conditions aeroponic platform. The resulting dataset will be a resource within SolACE to analyse and explore the diversity of architectural patterns, to dissect the genetic variation through association genetics and to develop predictive breeding approaches through modelling

Root Architecture Phenotyping in Aeroponics: a critical review

Phenotyping root dynamics in aeroponics has proven to be an affordable, non-invasive and high throughput technique suitable for quantitative genetic analysis. However, root systems grown in aeroponics could be poor surrogates of field-grown root systems, largely because mechanical impedance is lacking. This poster assesses what we have learnt from 10 years of QTL analyses of the root system architecture dynamics of cereals in aeroponics

Does root plasticity contribute to crop tolerance to abiotic stresses?

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Philips Intellivue NMT module: precision and performance improvements to meet the clinical requirements of neuromuscular block management

offour (TOF) ratio during neuromuscular block (NMB) recovery. This study evaluated the precision and performance of the Philips Intellivue NMT module (NMT) before (part 1) and after (part 2) several technical upgrades (i.e., firmware upgrade, new cable, and hand adapter) that were recently available. Two cohorts of 30 patients who were scheduled to undergo rhino/ septoplasty under general anesthesia were included in the study. TOF ratios were recorded simultaneously every 15 s on both hands with the NMT and a TOF-Watch SX installed inside a SL TOF-Tube (TWX). Before rocuronium was administered and once final responses were stabilized, the average of the four successive measurements that determined the baselines and repeatability coefficients were compared using a z test. Simultaneous measurements were recorded at different NMB stages: onset, depth of NMB after intubation, when TWX recovered TOF count 2, TOF ratios 0.5 and 0.9, and when NMT recovered TOF ratio 0.9. The results were compared using a Student t test; p < 0.05 was considered significant. The NMT repeatability coefficients obtained in part 1 were significantly higher than with the TWX, they were significantly lower in part 2. Initially, the NMT significantly overestimated NMB recovery at every stage. Conversely, in the second part of the study, no difference reached statistical significance. With the recent upgrades and the new hand adapter, the NMT provided similar results compared with the TWX, Their implementation should be recommended in clinical practice