Precision Phenotyping for Improving Drought Stress Tolerant Maize in Southern Asia and Eastern Africa

More than 70% of maize in south and southeast Asia is grown under drought-prone rain-fed marginal conditions and for eastern Africa the scenario is even worst. In Kenya, for example, maize is the most important food crop. It provides food to over 90% of the population. Maize is grown in virtually all cultivatable land in the country totaling 2.5 million hectares; but with average yields of 1.5 tons/hectare. The reason for this low production is water stress occasioned by erratic and insufficient rainfall and low soil fertility. Maize is mainly grown rain-fed, and very little is irrigated. Out of the total production, small scale farms account for 75% of the production, with 25% being grown by about 1000 small scale farms in the high potential areas.

The project builds on products that have proven their value to poor farmers in eastern and southern Africa, and will help to generate stress-tolerant varieties that will be immediately useful to farmers in southern Asia. As well as setting up a precision phenotyping platform, the project will generate information on the genetic control of drought tolerance. Large-effect QTLs affecting these traits will be fine-mapped to a precision required for marker-assisted backcrossing. This information will be useful in future for the accelerated development of multi-stress tolerant maize varieties in Asia. GEI analysis combined with GIS data and insights from socio-economic assessments will provide advice on scale-out domains. Downstream impact in farmers’ fields can be also expected shortly after the end of the 3-year project.

In the frame of this project the Institute of Agricultural Engineering, Tropics and Subtropics Group, is dealing with the possibility to use thermal imaging for phenotyping in maize.