Morphological responses of old and modern wheat cultivars under varying soil N condition

Crop science

Excess use of mineral N in the monocrop farm not only increases the production cost but also results in high N leaching and negative environmental impacts. With “Farm-To-Fork” strategy, the European farmers must reduce around 20-30% nitrogen application to crops by 2030. Identifying cultivars that are suitable to low N or optimized N applications thus are important in this context. Both morphological traits (leaf angle, specific leaf area, leaf area, greenness, tiller number, spikelet number, and thousand grain weights etc…) and photosynthesis traits are known to contribute to crop yields and harvest index. Importance of morphological and photosynthesis traits to crop yield depends on cultivars, locations, and soil N conditions. Further understandings how two groups of traits for old and modern cultivars under varying soil N could be helpful to find out suitable traits and cultivars that support the breeding scheme and modeling crop-N responses.

The aim of the study are to (i) quantify the dynamics of crop morphological characteristics (leaf and canopy) (ii) quantify biomass growth and yield traits; and (iii) to analyze the correlation of soil dynamic N and environmental conditions with morphological and yield traits

This work will base on the field trial with different cultivars and N applications. Students will have an opportunities to work in the well-designed field trial with different old and modern cultivars under contrast soil N conditions as well as different measuring methods (destructive and sensing techniques) in the laboratory and field. Student also support to perform statistical analysis of relations of various crop traits and relevant environmental factors.

Cultivars variations in crop morphological responses to N

02/2024 – 09/2024

English or German

Interests in crop phenotyping, N application, statistics

Dr. Thuy Nguyen, Dr. Hubert Hüging

tngu@uni-bonn.de