Researchers have made strides in the study of fruit genomics in recent years, but less ground has been gained in the field of phenomics, the measurement of plant and fruit traits. Genotyping and phenotyping go hand in hand; one must know if a specificfruit trait is present, and in what form, in order to tie the trait to a specific gene. Conventional phenotyping is done visually, such as by recognizing disease symptoms and severity or fruit color ratings, or by using other standard, labor-intensive techniques pertinent to the trait of interest. They could include caliper measurements for fruit size or destructive chemical methods to determine a fruit's chemical composition.New, non-contact, rapid-sensing techniques, including miniature portable mul-tispectral and thermal infrared cameras, are emerging for high-throughput field phenotyping.
展开▼
