Prediction of harvest-related traits in barley using high-throughput phenotyping data and machine learning

Hans Tietze¹Lamis Abdelhakim²Barbora Pleskačová²Ayelet Kurtz-Sohn³Eyal Fridman³Zoran Nikoloski^1,4*Klara Panzarova^2*

• ¹Bioinformatics Department, Institute of Biochemistry and Biology, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany
• ²PSI (Photon Systems Instruments), spol. s r.o, Drásov, Czechia
• ³Institute of Plant Sciences, Agricultural Research Organization (ARO), Bet Dagan, Israel
• ⁴Systems Biology and Mathematical Modeling Group, Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology, Potsdam, Germany

Developing crop varieties that maintain productivity under drought is essential for future food security. Here, we investigated the potential of time-resolved high-throughput phenotyping to predict harvest-related traits and identify drought-stressed plants. Six barley lines (Hordeum vulgare) were grown in a greenhouse environment with well-watered and drought treatments, and dynamically phenotyped using RGB, thermal infrared, chlorophyll fluorescence and hyperspectral imaging sensors. Temporal phenomic classification model accurately distinguished between drought-treated and control plants, achieving high accuracy (classification accuracy ≥ 0.97) even when relying solely on predictors from the early drought response phase. Canopy temperature depression at the early stage and RGB-derived plant size estimates at the late stage emerged as key classification features. Temporal phenomic prediction model of harvest-related traits achieved particularly high mean R2 values for total biomass dry weight (0.97) and total spike weight (0.93), with RGB plant size estimators emerging as important predictors. Importantly, prediction accuracy for these traits remained high (R2 ≥ 0.84) even when restricted to early developmental phase data, including the stem elongation stage. Models trained on pooled drought and control data outperformed single-treatment models and maintained high predictive power across treatments. Together, these findings highlight the value of integrating high-throughput phenotyping with temporal modelling to enable earlier, more cost-effective selection of drought-resilient genotypes, and demonstrate the broader potential of phenomics-driven strategies for accelerating crop improvement under stress-prone environments.