Managing and monitoring soil moisture levels for precise phenotyping of rice germplasm under drought field conditions
2008
Torres, R. | Serraj, R., International Rice Research Inst., Los Banos, Laguna (Philippines)
Studies on drought stress phenotyping to assist in crop improvement for drought tolerance on rice can be done best under actual field conditions. However, soil moisture distribution in the field need to be precisely monitored and controlled to improve the heritability and consistency of the drought experiments. A drip irrigation system was used to impose different drought stress timing, targeting the desired growth stage on genotypes with variable phenology within a same field during dry season. In lowland paddy rice or in wide-scale germplasm screening where drip irrigation is not applicable, homogenize soil moisture level within an area is a major obstacle. Precise characterization of spatial variation of soil moisture content was done to monitor the stress level applied over a range of experimental area. This was archived by installing various soil moisture sensors and devices strategically in the experimental block. Delta-T SM200 sensors that were attached to Delta-T DL2e data logger were used to record soil moisture content at 30cm depth on hourly or day intervals. Soil tensiometers that were set at 15 and 30 cm depths and access tubes for a Diviner2000 probe to monitor down to 70 cm soil depth at 10 cm interval were installed to observed the evolution of soil moisture profile every two days during the stress period. Soil moisture content data are used to evaluate the results of physiological tests as well as the biomass accumulation and yield of rice varieties as affected by drought stress.
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