Climate impact and adaptation to heat and drought stress of regional and global wheat production

Abstract

Wheat (Triticum aestivum) is the most widely grown food crop in the world threatened by future climate change. In this study, we simulated climate change impacts and adaptation strategies for wheat globally using new crop genetic traits (CGT), including increased heat tolerance, early vigor to increase early crop water use, late flowering to reverse an earlier anthesis in warmer conditions, and the combined traits with additional nitrogen (N) fertilizer applications, as an option to maximize genetic gains. These simulations were completed using three wheat crop models and five Global Climate Models (GCM) for RCP 8.5 at mid-century. Crop simulations were compared with country, US state, and US county grain yield and production. Wheat yield and production from high-yielding and low-yielding countries were mostly captured by the model ensemble mean. However, US state and county yields and production were often poorly reproduced, with large variability in the models, which is likely due to poor soil and crop management input data at this scale. Climate change is projected to decrease global wheat production by −1.9% by mid-century. However, the most negative impacts are projected to affect developing countries in tropical regions. The model ensemble mean suggests large negative yield impacts for African and Southern Asian countries where food security is already a problem. Yields are predicted to decline by −15% in African countries and −16% in Southern Asian countries by 2050. Introducing CGT as an adaptation to climate change improved wheat yield in many regions, but due to poor nutrient management, many developing countries only benefited from adaptation from CGT when combined with additional N fertilizer. As growing conditions and the impact from climate change on wheat vary across the globe, region-specific adaptation strategies need to be explored to increase the possible benefits of adaptations to climate change in the future.

Validation of a model to estimate climate effects on wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) production in a hydrological basin

“…Their results reveal that climate change could negatively impact its production in China by up to 18.26% by the end of this century. Pequeno et al (2021) and other authors simulated climate change impacts and global adaptation strategies for wheat, using new crop genetic traits -including increased heat tolerance and traits combined with additional nitrogen fertilizer applications-, as an option to maximize genetic gains. Their results predict that climate change will reduce global wheat production by 1.9% by mid-century.…”

Plant aquaporins: A frontward to make crop plants drought resistant

“…In cotton plant, for the first time, the X intrinsic proteins subfamily was characterized (Park et al, 2010). In total, 20 XIPs have been reported so far in fungi, mosses, protozoans, and other higher plants.…”

“…Drought stress increased ABA accumulation that induced AQP opening. The resulting increase in gs promotes leaf growth and inhibits ethylene synthesis (Pequeno et al, 2021).…”

“…There are many factors behind water scarcity in the agricultural sector: global warming, low rainfall, salinity, high-intensity sun rays, lowering of the water table, and so on. Crop plants, mostly nonwoody, contain about 80-95% water in their fresh biomass and water plays a significant role in their development, growth, and reproduction (Hirt & Shinozaki, 2003;Lisar et al, 2012), which are then seriously impacted in case of drought stress (Kapoor et al, 2020;Nazar et al, 2015;Pequeno et al, 2021;Xu et al, 2020). Drought stress inhibits the photosynthetic machinery and disrupts the cellular metabolism (Kapoor et al, 2020;Nazar et al, 2015;Sehar et al, 2020;Sharma et al, 2019).…”

Aptamer-Based Fluorescent Biosensor for the Rapid and Sensitive Detection of Allergens in Food Matrices

“…As one of the three major grains and the staple foods of mankind, wheat is widely cultivated all over the world [116,117]. However, wheat is also a major plant allergen, and some people have severe allergic reactions to wheat [118][119][120][121].…”