The Use of Near-Infrared Imaging (NIR) as a Fast Non-Destructive Screening Tool to Identify Drought-Tolerant Wheat Genotypes

Due to climate change, many agricultural areas will face shortages in water availability; thus, the mission of the upcoming decades is to ensure food security while improving agriculture sustainability. The development of wheat varieties that are more adaptable to the changing climate is mandatory to achieve this goal. Genetic resources can be the key to unlock a wide genetic potential, but faster, high throughput methods are needed to easily screen the huge amount of available genetic resources. Phenotyping is the central element to exploit wheat genetic resources as it allows us to identify superior genotypes and to achieve selection gain. To select contrasting phenotypes within a core set of 149 durum wheat genotypes, belonging to the National Research Council (CNR) germplasm collection, under drought stress conditions, we studied plant water status gained by NIR imaging. By the application of the present method, it was possible to rapidly identify and select a set of putative genotypes highly tolerant to drought, as well as a set of contrasting genotypes, for further studies and/or for breeding programs. This promising approach is scalable to a larger number of genotypes in pre-breeding program.