Speaker
Description
Plant response to environmental stresses varies with time and does not uniformly manifest across the entire plant or even specific organs. However, in most cases the phenotypic responses are measured at a single time point and lack spatial resolution. In rice, a staple food for more than half the humans, this phenomenon is evident as the grains develop on the panicle. We have developed a non-destructive 3D imaging approach to capture the dynamic panicle level stress responses over a time course with high spatial resolution. We have applied this technique to rice panicles from diverse accessions to measure their response to heat stress. This has enabled us to identify multiple loci regulating heat stress response by combining digital traits with genome-wide association analysis. Functional characterization of the identified genes is providing mechanistic insights into heat-sensitive pathways that determine the grain nutritional quality in context of variation in high temperature responses. These findings will be discussed in context of human health and food safety.