| Project Name: | Investigating the effects of drought stress on adaptive profile of P. tremula genotypes using chlorophyll fluorescence kinetics and hyperspectral imaging |
| Shorted Project Name: | ASPEN DROUGHT |
| Beneficiary: | Czech University of Life Sciences Prague – Faculty of Forestry and Wood Sciences |
| Investigator: | prof. Ing. Milan Lstibůrek, MSc, Ph.D. |
| Operational Programme Title: | European Plant Phenotyping Network 2020 |
European aspen (Populus tremula L.) is a widespread species with its distribution range covering most parts of Europe and Asia and a valuable tree species for diversity of boreal forests. Climate change will increase the forest die-back due to heat and drought. Because extreme weather conditions, like prolonged drought, can affect especially seedling establishment, tolerance to water stress in the early plant development is crucial.
The main objective is to investigate the tolerance of European aspen to drought stress and recovery from the stress during the early plant development. This research is based on non-destructive, high-throughput plant phenotyping techniques: monitoring the growth parameters and chlorophyll fluorescence kinetics daily, combined with hyperspectral imaging at National Plant Phenotyping Infrastructure (NaPPI) facilities in Helsinki, Finland. We assume that the effects of drought stress on P. tremula seedlings will induce physiological and biochemical changes that can be detected in the growth, photosynthesis and foliar spectral reflectance before it is visible to human eyes, indicating that early-stage markers to assessing plant condition could then be developed.