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| Home > Publications database > Root phenotyping for drought tolerance traits in the underutilized crop plant buckwheat |
| Conference Presentation (After Call) | FZJ-2025-04855 |
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2025
Abstract: Buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum Moench) is a pseudocereal that was once a globally grown staple food. However, it was replaced by higher yielding cereals such as wheat. In Germany, it is nowadays only used as catch crop because of its beneficial effects on soil health. With an increasing interest in nutritious and gluten free products, buckwheat consumption is on the rise, and buckwheat must currently be imported. In the BMBF-funded interdisciplinary project Buckwheat Improvement by Modern Technologies for the Establishment of a Dual-Use Crop (BIMOTEC), we aim to support buckwheat re-establishment in Germany by additionally revealing its bioeconomic potential as multi-purpose crop. Besides the improved production of grains as food, the utilization of residual buckwheat biomass is investigated, i.e. extraction of the secondary metabolites like rutin from leaf biomass and seed hulls, as well as bio-based platform compounds from stem biomass. An extensive pre-breeding approach involving phenomics, transcriptomics, and metabolomics combined with the development of genome-editing technology will be a kickstart for breeding of new local cultivars, while improved agronomic models and industrial-scale metabolite extraction protocols will support the production of buckwheat and buckwheat-based products. As part of BIMOTEC, we initiated the first large-scale image-based phenotyping of buckwheat root traits. In high-throughput plant phenotyping experiments using the novel phenotyping platform GrowScreen-Rhizo III, we will quantify the genotypic variation in root development of buckwheat in response to drought. In a preliminary experiment, plants of the cultivar ‘Devyatka’ were grown under control and drought conditions, which were achieved by adjusting the soil water potential to 0.2 MPa and 0.7 MPa, respectively. Here, buckwheat revealed a widely branched taproot system with many very fine roots. Based on the established protocol, we will phenotype a panel of buckwheat genotypes under control and drought conditions and combine our results with earlier analyses of water-use strategies. In addition, we will establish a root washing procedure to determine root traits of buckwheat destructively. With this high throughput phenotyping approach, we will provide new insights into buckwheat drought tolerance and bring forward breeding of local climate-resilient buckwheat cultivars.
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