Activities for Diversity COBRA DTU Orbit (10/03/2019) Final report V1.0 for the CORE Organic II funded project: Coordinating Organic Breeding Activities for Diversity COBRA Post project summary suitable for web publication Background Plant breeding is crucial in creating organic crop production systems that can better cope with interacting stresses such as pests and diseases (especially seed-borne diseases), weeds and the increasingly erratic and unpredictable variation in climate and weather. In this context, COBRA aimed to support and develop organic plant breeding and seed production with a focus on increasing the use and potential of plant material with high genetic diversity in cereals (wheat and barley) and grain legumes (pea and faba bean), through coordinating, linking and expanding existing breeding and research. Although systems based on high, within-crop diversity have shown promising results in organic systems and are now subject to intensive research, their benefits cannot be exploited currently, due to agronomic, regulatory and other hurdles. Also, it is currently unclear which plant breeding approaches, high diversity or otherwise, are most efficient to breed varieties for organic agriculture. To help these aims, COBRA's work was arranged into a management workpackage to coordinate the work and the following five sub-programmes:

Spectral and thermal assessments may enable the precise, high-throughput and low-cost characterisation of traits linked to drought tolerance. However, spectral and thermal measurements of the canopy water status are influenced by the crops' soil coverage, the size of the biomass and other properties such as the leaf angle distribution. The aim of this study was to develop a referenced spectral method that would be minimally influenced by potentially perturbing factors for retrieving the water status of differing cultivars. Sixteen spring barley cultivars were grown in field trials under imposed drought stress, natural drought stress and irrigated conditions. The relative leaf water content of barley plants declines diurnally from pre-dawn until the afternoon, and other plant traits such as the biomass change little throughout the day. As an indicator of the current drought stress, pre-dawn and afternoon values of the relative leaf water content were assessed spectrally. Diurnal changes in reflectance are only slightly influenced by other perturbing factors. A new spectral index (diurnal dehydration index) was developed by using the wavelengths 730 and 457 nm collected from an active spectrometer. This index allowed the differentiation of the drought tolerance of barley plants. The diurnal dehydration index was significantly related to final biomass, grain yield and harvest index and significantly different between cultivars. Compared with other indices, the diurnal dehydration index offered a higher stability in retrieving the water status of barley plants. Due to its diurnal assessment, the index was barely influenced by the differences in cultivars biomass at the time of measurement. It may represent a valuable tool for assessing the water status or drought tolerance in breeding nurseries.

In contrast to high-throughput genotyping which can manage a large number of plants at relatively low cost, phenotyping of many individual genotypes in field trials is still laborious and expensive. Early plant vigour, as an early selection criterion, is a trait that is visually scored due to a lack of suitable phenotyping methods for an accurate detection of this trait in large field trials. A high-throughput phenotyping technique for scoring early plant vigour would enhance the breeding process. This study was conducted to develop a method for scoring phenotypic differences in early plant vigour of 50 winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L) cultivars in a 2-years experiment using a vehicle based multispectral active sensor and two commercially available active sensors, GreenSeeker and CropCircle. Pixel analysis of RGB images revealed to be the most feasible and superior method compared to other possible reference methods. A comparison between the two years 2011 and 2012 confirmed that early plant vigour was affected by genotypic differences. A novel spectral plant vigour index (EPVI) was found to accurately reflect the plant vigour at tillering. Different methods were applied to identify optimal combinations of wavelengths to predict early plant vigour, including multivariate modelling and prediction, contour maps for identifying all possible simple ratios and testing of combined indices. The EPVI and the relative amount of green pixels (RAGP) derived from digital images were significantly related with r(2) = 0.98 to each other in both years. A total of 200 plots, 12 m in length, could be measured within 75 min. The EPVI was shown to be an accurate scoring method for the high-throughput screening of large field trials. The rapidity and accuracy of this novel method may contribute to enhanced selection at early growth stages. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Development of organic plant breeding and seed production will have a valuable impact on organic plant production. Breeding of plant material adapted for organic agriculture is crucial in order to cope with stresses such as climate change, weeds and seed borne diseases. Conventional varieties may not meet the specific needs of organic agriculture. The use of plant material adapted to conditions of organic agriculture will have a positive effect on the productivity and sustainability of organic crop production.