Assessing Physiological Characteristics and Genotypic Variability of Wheat Genotypes Using Remote Sensing.

Plant breeders are always looking for novel approaches for understanding the physiological basis of crop improvement. In the recent years, development of technologies has made a major breakthrough in high-throughput genotyping and phenotyping in wheat. Use of remote sensing is one of the approaches for efficient data collection in the field where thousands of genotypes across multiple locations are evaluated for further selection in breeding program. GreenSeeker® based normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) measurements were taken repeatedly throughput the wheat growing season on different locations to study the stand establishment, ground cover, early vigor, biomass, and senescence. The results indicate that this method can be used to identify the genotypic differences regarding the above mentioned plant physiological traits. Moreover, NDVI was highly correlated with aboveground biomass and grain yield. It shows that the measurements taken early in the season can be useful to estimate biomass production and grain yield. This methodology shows that it can be helpful for data collection and genotype evaluation in breeding programs. Also, it is very important to combine the genotypic and phenotypic data into genomic selection process and explore the research on genomics and phenomics in an integrated form to apply in plant breeding.