Quantification of phenotypic plasticity in biomass production and allocation in cereal-legume mixtures at high spatio-temporal resolution using drones

• Title: "Quantification of Phenotypic Plasticity in Biomass Production and Allocation in Cereal-Legume Mixtures at High Spatio-Temporal Resolution Using Drones - Application to Breeding" INRAE.
  • PhD student: Virgilio Freitas.
  • Affiliated unit: INRAE, UMR 0320 - GQE – DEAP.
  • Co-supervision:
    • Jérôme Enjalbert (INRAE)
    • Timothée Flutre (INRAE)
  • Doctoral school: Plant Sciences Doctoral School: from Gene to Ecosystem.
  • Project duration: 2023–2026.

Project Summary:

 Conventional agriculture has enabled a dramatic increase in yields at the cost of negative environmental consequences due to the massive use of pesticides and fertilizers. Diversification within fields is a major lever for the agroecological transition, particularly through cereal and legume mixtures. In organic farming, these mixtures yield higher than the average of monocultures, and the allocation of plant biomass to grains can be positively modified in mixed stands. This phenotypic plasticity is due to plant-plant interactions, such as nitrogen acquisition in these mixtures resulting from the combination of competition and complementarity. The choice of cultivars is essential to optimize the benefits of intercropping. However, cultivars are selected for their productivity in monoculture, mainly due to the difficulty of phenotyping them in mixtures.

Therefore, the main objective of this doctoral project is to provide a methodology for phenotyping cereal cultivars, in monoculture but especially in mixture with a legume, for traits of interest for selection. Based on imaging from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), it aims to quantify, at high spatio-temporal resolution, the result of plant-plant interactions on biomass production and allocation related to carbon and nitrogen metabolism. This methodology will then be tested in the context of applications in quantitative genetics and breeding, using wheat-pea mixtures as a model for intercropping. The doctorate will be based on field trials, manual and drone phenotyping, image analysis, trait prediction, and genetic analysis.