Phenotypic traits, drought responses, and growth parameters of 38 temperate maize varieties under well-watered and drought-stressed conditions in a greenhouse experiment

Plant traits of 38 temperate maize varieties from a greenhouse experiment were derived. The plant traits encompass three major types of parameters: 1) phenotypic traits, such as biomass weight and biomass allocation, used for deriving phenotypic plasticity, 2) drought responses, parameters that indicate the sensitivity of plant response to soil drying, 3) growth parameters, referring to the projected area of plant measured throughout the experiment. The data were derived from the biomass samples harvested at the end of the experiment, as well as from the visible light images collected at the interval of 1–2 days with the high-throughput phenotyping facility. The 38 maize varieties include landraces, hybrids, and open-pollinated varieties from Central Europe.
The maize plants were grown in mesocosms and replicated four times per variety per treatment. Each mesocosm contained two plants, and the mean value of the two plants was taken for each parameter in this dataset. Drought treatment was applied on half of the plants 37 days after sowing by stopping irrigation. The other half of the plants were well-watered, with the mean soil water potential −60 hPa.

Research domain: Plant Cultivation and Agricultural Technology

Research question: 1) What are the most plastic and the least plastic traits of temperate maize under drought stress?
2) How do phenotypic plasticity, drought responsiveness, and drought tolerance correlate with one another?
3) Do landraces differ from modern varieties in terms of phenotypic plasticity, drought responsiveness, and drought tolerance?