The Use of Imaging as Non-destructive Tool for Water Stress Tolerance in Spring Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.)

Recent trends show a reduction in crop productivity worldwide due to severe climatic change. Water stress is a serious problem for barley production, because it affects simultaneously many morphological, physiological and biochemical traits. The present work attempts to provide comprehensive information related to barley plant response and adaptation to drought stress by using a high throughput phenotyping approach. Morpho-physiological parameters of barley plants were collected using the Scanalyzer 3D high-throughput phenotyping platform (LemnaTec, GmbH), associated to more conventional phenotyping methods. With this approach, we could study the effects of water deficit on barley plant development in terms of early detection of plant physiological stress responses. Our results showed that some barley genotypes cultivated under water stress were comparable to the control in terms of productivity, as well as in digital indices. The doubled haploid line ‘DH2’ and the genotype ‘Safra’ were the most tolerant to water stress.