Implementing sensor technology to evaluate genetic and spatial variability within the Kansas State University Wheat Breeding program

Doctor of PhilosophyDepartment of AgronomyAllan K FritzJesse A PolandGlobally wheat is one of the three most important cereal crops globally providing 20% of protein and total calories consumed. In the world as well as the state of Kansas, wheat is planted on more acres than any other crop. Additionally, wheat sales generated $1.27 billion in revenue in 2021 making wheat an economic driver for the entire state. However, the annual genetic gain in wheat is 0.8-1.2% and is not sufficient to support the increasing global population. Therefore, the adoption of new technology and computational methods are critical to increase genetic gain and increase wheat adaptability both globally and in the Central Plains. Proper temporal resolution is critical for quality HTP sensor data collection, as collection at key physiological growing points can increase yield prediction and assist with phenotypic selection. However, growth stages are dependent on weather and fluctuate both across locations and years. This makes day of year or day after sowing a poor phenology metric, particularly with winter wheat where the vernalization requirement compounds phenology prediction challenges and significantly shifts developmental stages relative to calendar days. This study was designed to assess the performance of various phenology models to predict heading time of both historically adapted and experimental genotypes of wheat genotypes in Kansas. The results suggest that full season models with multi-phase coefficients can increase phenology prediction over traditional thermal indices. However, using cumulative thermal times after the vernalization requirements also provided phenology predictions that were statistically similar to the full season phase change models. Genotype by environment interactions is a prominent issue for breeding programs, particularly when performance testing elite lines across multiple locations and years. In addition to macroenvironments, variations in soil properties have shown to develop microenvironments within location years. These soil microenvironments can potentially be quantified through both traditional and precision agriculture tools. Whereas, traditional soil sampling density is limited by cost and time, precision agriculture on-the-go soil sensors have the potential to gather large quantities of data. However, these measurements are often giving only relative measurements. Through this experiment two sensor platforms were evaluated as potential tools to quantify spatial variability within breeding programs. This study showed that soil spatial variability does impact genotype yield performance and that indirect measurements from both sensor platforms can quantify this impact. The continued development of high quality, cost effective multi-spectral imaging devices has led to numerous studies to evaluate this technologies ability to predict traits and grain yield. Despite these advancements the widespread implementation of these tools for selection has been slow and most breeders still rely on harvested grain yield and visual selection for cultivar advancement. The intention of this experiment was to evaluate high spatial resolution data from, multi-spectral sensors at multi-temporal collection points to make yield group rank order selections. Additionally, a random forest algorithm was used to evaluate the potential of incorporating machine learning with HTP data as a selection tool. Although the rank order correlations were higher than the correlation to grain yield, the selection accuracies of random forest were not statistically better than the no-information rate. However, this study does lay the groundwork for future similar studies using alternative sensor aided metrics and machine learning algorithms. Overall, the combined results of these studies show that these precision agriculture tools have to potential to increase genetic gain in plant breeding. However, these studies also show that both sensor and computational limitations still exist. Moving forward it is pivotal that future studies focus on technology combinations that have the potential to easily be implemented within a breeding program

Incidencia del programa ambiental de gestión de riesgo de desastre y cambio climático MARENA-PAGRICC en el primer ciclo, en el municipio de san isidro, departamento de Matagalpa, micro cuenca Las Mangas, comunidades de Llano del Boquerón y Mal Paso

El programa Ambiental de Gestión de Riesgos y Cambio Climático (PAGRICC) ejecutado por MARENA pretende en su momento reducir la vulnerabilidad de los protagonistas en la Micro cuenca las Mangas y las comunidades de estudio Llano del Boquerón y Mal Paso, por lo tanto la investigación evaluó la incidencia del programa ambiental en su primer ciclo en el municipio de San Isidro Departamento de Matagalpa en el segundo semestre del año 2014, el propósito de la investigación fue conocer el proceso de identificación y selección de los beneficiarios, realizados en las comunidades y de ésta manera valorar las trasformaciones que los protagonistas que han alcanzado en el desarrollo de los sistemas de restauración ambiental (SRA) practicados en sus comunidades. De ésta manera se puede identificar el grado de ejecución del programa ambiental (PAGRICC) para alcanzar los objetivos esperados por el programa; en el estudio realizado se valoraron las transformaciones sociales, económicas y ambientales desde los protagonistas, concluyendo que la ejecución del programa fue de suma importancia para enfrentar los fenómenos climatológicos que afectan al Municipio de San Isidro de igual manera la reducción de la vulnerabilidad de la zona ante la sequía, lo cual el estudio del programa contribuyó a los indicadores en las mejoras del ingreso, producción y desempleo. En el cumplimiento y desarrollo del programa según el reglamento operativo del este mismo se determina que las transformaciones ayudaron al mejoramiento de las condiciones de los protagonistas y de igual manera a sus fincas o parcelas; así de esta manera se les propone tanto a los protagonistas del programa, como a las diferentes entidades participantes la mejora en las debilidades encontradas en el estudio de camp

Young people, social media, social network sites and sexual health communication in Australia: ‘this is funny, you should watch it

Social media and social network sites (SNS) are an evolving area for sexual health communication with young people. They present opportunities and challenges for sexual health professionals and young people alike, such as learning through interactivity and addressing concerns about privacy. In this article, we present and discuss the findings from six rural and urban focus groups with young people in Australia about the use of social media and SNS for sexual health communication. We discuss a number of issues related to the use of social media and SNS for sexual health communication, such as concerns about bullying, privacy, and the stigma attached to sexual health

Global Wheat Head Detection 2021: an improved dataset for benchmarking wheat head detection methods

The Global Wheat Head Detection (GWHD) dataset was created in 2020 and has assembled 193,634 labelled wheat heads from 4700 RGB images acquired from various acquisition platforms and 7 countries/institutions. With an associated competition hosted in Kaggle, GWHD_2020 has successfully attracted attention from both the computer vision and agricultural science communities. From this first experience, a few avenues for improvements have been identified regarding data size, head diversity, and label reliability. To address these issues, the 2020 dataset has been reexamined, relabeled, and complemented by adding 1722 images from 5 additional countries, allowing for 81,553 additional wheat heads. We now release in 2021 a new version of the Global Wheat Head Detection dataset, which is bigger, more diverse, and less noisy than the GWHD_2020 version

Growing crops for biofuel and forage while conserving soil and water

Master of ScienceDepartment of AgronomyHumberto BlancoThe use of renewable feedstocks to produce cellulosic ethanol is quickly becoming a reality as facilities to produce cellulosic ethanol are scheduled to open in the upcoming years. Initial feedstocks for these facilities are thought to be crop residues such as corn (Zea mays L.) and wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) residues. However, additional feedstocks, such as perennial warm-season grasses (WSG), maybe needed to meet the demands of these bioenergy facilities. Thus, the development of regional dedicated energy crop systems is a high priority. Our objectives were to: a) assess the impacts of growing WSG on water storage, soil physical and hydraulic properties, soil organic carbon (SOC) dynamics, and water and wind erosion as compared with row crops, b) assess the impacts of growing WSG on biomass and forage production and quality and c) determine the most adaptable WSG species to dryland conditions. A number of dedicated energy crops and their performance across three different moisture regimes in Kansas were studied. Biomass yield, soil physical and hydraulic properties, and soil water and wind erosion parameters were measured between August 2010 and August 2012. Additionally, forage quality under two cutting systems (biofuel and forage) and two harvest heights (0.1 m and 0.2 m) and water infiltration was determined in 2011. Differences in bulk density, water retention, infiltration and SOC were found to be minimal. However, differences in wind and water erosion parameters indicate that WSG can protect soil from erosion. Furthermore, soil water data indicate that WSG are better suited to use early season moisture to accumulate biomass than annual row crops. Yield results indicate that a two cut hay system with a 0.1 m cutting height can produce more biomass compared with a one cut biofuel system. Additionally, the hay system improved forage quality parameters. Data collected from this project provided insights into the viability of growing various dedicated energy crops across the region during the first five years of production

Evaluation of field‐based single plant phenotyping for wheat breeding

Abstract High‐throughput phenotyping (HTP) has the potential to revolutionize plant breeding by providing scientists with exponentially more data than was available through traditional observations. Even though data collection is rapidly increasing, the optimum use of this data and implementation in the breeding program has not been thoroughly explored. In an effort to apply HTP to the earliest stages of a plant breeding program, we extended field‐based HTP pipelines to evaluate and extract data from spaced single plants. Using a panel of 340 winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) lines planted in full plots and grid‐spaced single plants for two growing seasons, we evaluated relationships between single plants and full plot yields. Normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) was collected multiple times through the growing season using an unoccupied aerial vehicle. NDVI measurements during grain filling stage from both single plants and full plots were typically positively associated with their respective grain yield with correlation ranging from ‐0.22 to 0.74. The relationship between single plant NDVI and full plot yield, however, was variable between seasons ranging from ‐0.40 to 0.06. A genome wide association analysis (GWAS) identified the same marker trait associations in both full plots and single plants, but also displayed variability between growing seasons. Strong genotype by environment interactions could impede selection on quantitative traits, yet these methods could provide an effective tool for plant breeding programs to quickly screen early‐generation germplasm. Efficient use of early‐generation, affordable HTP data could improve overall genetic gain in plant breeding

Young people, social media, social network sites and sexual health communication in Australia

Social media and social network sites (SNS) are an evolving area for sexual health communication with young people. They present opportunities and challenges for sexual health professionals and young people alike, such as learning through interactivity and addressing concerns about privacy. In this article, we present and discuss the findings from six rural and urban focus groups with young people in Australia about the use of social media and SNS for sexual health communication. We discuss a number of issues related to the use of social media and SNS for sexual health communication, such as concerns about bullying, privacy, and the stigma attached to sexual health.   CLIFTON WESTLY EVERS University of Nottingham Ningbo China KATH ALBURY University of New South Wales PAUL BYRON University of New South Wales KATE CRAWFORD Microsoft Researc