Assessing thermomorphogenesis capacity of Dutch Arabidopsis thaliana accessions derived from the wild
Temperature increases of just a few degrees can trigger a suite of morphological changes in plants, called thermomorphogenesis. Thermomorphogenesis leads to an open plant architecture that is proposedly beneficial for plant cooling capacity and avoidance of warmth. In this unprecendently detailed phenotyping experiment conducted in NPEC Utrecht we uncovered quantitative variation in many individual physiological, developmental and growth traits that together define thermomorphogenesis. To this aim we used close to 400 accessions of the established model species Arabidopsis thaliana that were wild-collected across the Netherlands. By associating the obtained trait data to environmental and geographical conditions at the site of collection, we obtain comprehensive understanding of the traits that contribute to optimizing plant performance when facing adverse temperature conditions and how this is shaped by local (micro) environmental conditions.
Many plant biology studies involve Arabidopsis thaliana as model plant. With the help of a cohort of first year Utrecht University (UU) bachelor Biology students participating in the course ‘Genomics’ and UU Biology staff members we compiled a collection of close to 400 Dutch Arabidopsis thaliana accessions that originated from across the Netherlands. Direct progeny of these wild-sampled plants were first cultivated in the NPEC Multi-environment rooms under standard and high temperature conditions until they had 10 leaves. The plants were subsequently comprehensively phenotyped in the NPEC Helios module and diverse growth, developmental, architectural and physiological traits were derived. Aim of this large scale phenotyping project was to assess the extent of natural phenotypic trait variation that exists in thermomorphogenesis capacity among natural Arabidopsis varieties in an unprecedented level of detail. With the obtained quantitative trait data at hand we can now study how plants achieve optimal performance under detrimental high temperature conditions and how this is shaped by the geographical and (micro)climatic characteristics of the sampling sites. The obtained knowledge will be helpful for informed development of resilient crop varieties that can withstand global warming.
In this project >2500 first generation progeny plants derived from a total of close to 400 wild-collected Dutch Arabidopsis accessions were cultivated on potting soil in the precision-controlled NPEC multi-environment chambers. Plants that reached 10 true leaves were transferred to the Helios shoot phenotyping module and high resolution RGB, fluorescence and VNIR hyperspectral data was collected during the photoperiod and during the night period. The use of the very precisice and homogenous environment provided by the multi-environment rooms and Helios tremendously reduces stochastic variation. Therefore, highly reliable results could be obtained by using only a relatively low number of replicates, which was an absolute requirement for this large scale experiment.
The following people were involved in the conception and execution of the project:
- Ava Verhoeven, Plant Stress Resilience, UU
- Basten L. Snoek, Theoretical Biology and Bioinformatics, UU
- Rens Dijkhuizen, MSC, Theoretical Biology and Bioinformatics, UU
- Vinicius Munaldi Lube, NPEC, UU
- Valerian Meline, NPEC, UU
- Martijn van Zanten, Plant Stress Resilience, UU
