Morphological and Physiological Screening to Predict Lettuce Biomass Production in Controlled Environment Agriculture

Abstract

Fast growth and rapid turnover is an important crop trait in controlled environment agriculture (CEA) due to its high cost. An ideal screening approach for fast-growing cultivars should detect desirable phenotypes non-invasively at an early growth stage, based on morphological and/or physiological traits. Hence, we established a rapid screening protocol based on a simple chlorophyll fluorescence imaging (CFI) technique to quantify the projected canopy size (PCS) of plants, combined with electron transport rate (ETR) measurements using a chlorophyll fluorometer. Eleven lettuce cultivars (Lactuca sativa), selected based on morphological differences, were grown in a greenhouse and imaged twice a week. Shoot dry weight (DW) of green cultivars at harvest 51 days after germination (DAG) was correlated with PCS at 13 DAG (R2 = 0.74), when the first true leaves had just appeared and the PCS was <8.5 cm2. However, early PCS of high anthocyanin (red) cultivars was not predictive of DW. Because light absorption by anthocyanins reduces the amount of photons available for photosynthesis, anthocyanins lower light use efficiency (LUE; DW/total incident light on canopy over the cropping cycle) and reduce growth. Additionally, the total incident light on the canopy throughout the cropping cycle explained 90% and 55% of variability in DW within green and red cultivars, respectively. Estimated leaf level ETR at a photosynthetic photon flux density (PPFD) of 200 or 1000 µmol m−2 s−1 were not correlated with DW in either green or red cultivars. In conclusion, early PCS quantification is a useful tool for the selection of fast-growing green lettuce phenotypes. However, this approach may not work in cultivars with high anthocyanin content because anthocyanins direct excitation energy away from photosynthesis and growth, weakening the correlation between incident light and growth.