111. Stay-green monitoring for maize drought tolerance under field environments using leaf hyperspectral data

Because of climate change, the frequency and intensity of drought and high temperatures are projected to increase at a global scale in the next decades. This study aimed to investigate the tolerance of different genotypes to drought stress by monitoring their stay-green status. The experiment was conducted at two locations in Germany in 2022. The results showed that the well-watered (WW) location’s SPAD and stay-green visual score (St.Gr.VS) were significantly higher than the water deficit (WD) for the same genotypes and the correlation coefficient between SPAD and St.Gr.VS was 0.61 and 0.73 for WW and WD respectively. Leaf reflectance differed significantly between DAS and genotypes in both locations and using the PLSR model improved the prediction of chlorophyll content and leaf senescence with R2 0.59 and 0.57 respectively. This study demonstrates the possibility of using hyperspectral data to identify suitable drought-resistant maize genotypes.