Improving nitrogen use efficiency in plants: effective phenotyping in conjunction with agronomic and genetic approaches

• Published in: Functional plant biology : FPB Vol. 45; no. 6; pp. 606 - 619
• Main Authors: Nguyen, Giao N, Kant, Surya
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Australia 01.01.2018
• ISSN: 1445-4408; 1445-4416
• DOI: 10.1071/FP17266

For global sustainable food production and environmental benefits, there is an urgent need to improve N use efficiency (NUE) in crop plants. Excessive and inefficient use of N fertiliser results in increased crop production costs and environmental pollution. Therefore, cost-effective strategies such as proper management of the timing and quantity of N fertiliser application, and breeding for better varieties are needed to improve NUE in crops. However, for these efforts to be feasible, high-throughput and reliable phenotyping techniques would be very useful for monitoring N status in planta, as well as to facilitate faster decisions during breeding and selection processes. This review provides an insight into contemporary approaches to phenotyping NUE-related traits and associated challenges. We discuss recent and advanced, sensor- and image-based phenotyping techniques that use a variety of equipment, tools and platforms. The review also elaborates on how high-throughput phenotyping will accelerate efforts for screening large populations of diverse genotypes in controlled environment and field conditions to identify novel genotypes with improved NUE.