Environmental assessment for generation challenge program phenotyping network (CIAT).

Crop water modeling tools are applied to supprt the selection of the most appropriate crop variety in a specific environment ("phenotyping"). In a first step, an agroclimatic appraisal of various sites over the world is made with FAO's LOCCLIM tool. Information on key climatic variables such as rainfall, air temperature, evapotranspiration, photoperiod and length of the growing period is provided. Subsequently, possible crop drought stress under different climatic conditions (e.g. different rainfall regimes) is evaluated for each site. With the crop water model BUDGET, the soil water balance is simulated, which is an efficient way to estimate water stress at different stages and the general effect on crop productivity. Assessment of crop water stress during the growing season enlightens the suitability of different crops and varieties to grow at specific sites and enables to create drought stress profiles for each site. This information can be utilized by genetic breeders, project partners of the Integrated Breeding Platform (GCP/CIAT), to select the optimal time window for drought resistance experiments of various crop varieties and to relate genes to drought traits.

Keywords:Phenotyping services

Disciplines:Physical geography and environmental geoscience, Soil sciences, challenges and pollution, Agriculture, land and farm management