Phenotyping Common Bean Under Drought Stress: High-Throughput Approaches for Enhanced Drought Tolerance

Abstract

In the course of climate change, drought is becoming one of the most important abiotic stress factors in agroecosystems and significantly affects agricultural productivity. Common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.), one of the most important legumes with a high protein content for human consumption, is very sensitive to water deficit. Thus, it is important to understand the physiological and developmental effects of water deficit on the bean. Thanks to technological advances, traditional phenotyping methods have evolved towards high-throughput phenotyping (HTP), which utilizes various imaging technologies for rapid and non-destructive monitoring of plant traits. This review examines the effects of water deficit on bean morphology (roots, leaves, stems, and generative organs), physiology (photosynthesis, antioxidant activity, phytohormones), and gene expression. We will also describe the HTP techniques used to quantify this water deficit-induced response through different imaging techniques and evaluate their applicability for the generation of reliable phenotypic data and the selection of drought-tolerant genotypes for further breeding and genetic progress.

Code and data availability

This is a review article on high-throughput phenotyping of common bean under drought. The supplied blocks contain no paper-specific phenotype datasets, images, sensor data, analysis code, models, or supplements with availability statements; all cited works are prior publications, not assets of this paper.

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