High throughput screening with chlorophyll fluorescence imaging and its use in crop improvement

Marker assisted plant breeding is a powerful technique for targeted crop improvement in horticulture and agriculture. It depends upon the correlation of desirable phenotypic characteristics with specific genetic markers. This can be determined by statistical models that relate the variation in the value of genetic markers to variation in phenotypic traits. It therefore depends upon the convergence of three technologies; the creation of genetically characterised (and thus marked) populations, high throughput screening procedures, and statistical procedures. While a large number of high throughput screening technologies are available, real-time screening techniques are usually based on some kind of imaging technologies, such as chlorophyll fluorescence imaging, that offers physiological data that are eminently suitable as a quantitative trait for genetic mapping.

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► Chlorophyll fluorescence imaging allows determination of plant physiological status.
► Chlorophyll fluorescence imaging can be used in high-throughput phenotyping systems.
► Many desirable traits are complex, quantitative and can be identified by QTL analysis.
► High-throughput screening allows phenotyping plant populations for QTL analysis.
► These QTL (or markers) can be used in breeding for agronomically desirable traits.