Predicting nitrogen use efficiency of Brassica napus lines using multi-spectral high-throughput phenotyping
Date
2020-03-10
Authors
van Steenbergen, Sarah
Bueckert, Rosalind
Vail, Sally
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Poster Presentation
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Abstract
C3 plants such as brassica napus L. (B. napus) require high levels of nitrogen to carry out photosynthesis and create energy for the plant to grow. The nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) is the fraction of applied nitrogen to the soil and the amount that is used by the plant. The purpose of this research is to investigate vegetation indices that are calculated from multi-spectral images taken with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that would correlate to the NUE of 56 B. napus lines in Saskatoon, SK. This high-throughput phenotyping (HTP) method is a newly developed technique to rapidly acquire non-destructive high quality quantitative and qualitative data that can later be used for breeders decisions regarding line development for future B. napus varieties. This research is conducted under two nitrogen treatments on the Agriculture and agri-food research farm, with full plant destructive sampling used as the ground truth data. In-situ measurements of leaf chlorophyll content using an apogee meter and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) using a greenseeker are collected to correlate with end of season yield data and UAV images taken throughout the growing season. This research will lead to an optimized vegetation index that can accurately predict the NUE of B. napus lines. With further development to increase the speed and precision in crop research decisions, thus reducing the time and labour intensive in-field measurements.
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UAV, phenotyping, leaf chlorophyl, vegetation index, nitrogen use efficiency, NUE
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Soils and Crops Workshop