Analysis of Crop Metabolites and Molecular Traits for Phenotyping Drought Tolerance.

Many underlying traits that contribute to abiotic stress tolerance are difficult to detect and genetically associate based on morphology, imaging, and yield. While a wide range of analytical tools have been developed to assay various metabolites and molecules in plant tissues, to be useful for crop phenotyping requires that they be high-throughput, cost-efficient, and meaningful for identifying useful crop attributes. Examples will be described where assays of the plant hormone abscisic acid, osmotically active solutes, and other molecules have been developed and used for drought phenotyping. Such phenotyping has potential value in providing information on the underlying mechanisms of drought tolerance. Requirements for such work and future developments will be discussed.