Tractor Based Precision Phenotyping of Diverse Rice Populations in the Field.

High throughput phenotyping technologies can empower gene discovery and agronomic improvement in rice by enabling the linkage of sequence diversity with physiological, morphological, and agronomic variation.  Next generation breeding approaches place an ever increasing demand for large field scale approaches to phenomics.  Here we present the initial results from the evaluation of 2 highly diverse rice populations using a tractor-based phenotyping system at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), Philippines.   The system incorporated sensors for monitoring multispectral reflectance, canopy temperature, and plant height.  The first study focused on evaluating biomass related traits in a large recombinant inbred population (1,700  F8 RILs).  The second study focused on the evaluation of a reference panel of 300 Indica accessions as part of a multi-environment  global phenotyping project.  This talk will highlight the many challenges of phenotyping paddy grown rice with widely diverse agronomic properties.