Climatic Warming Increases Winter Wheat Yield but Reduces Grain Nitrogen Concentration in East China

Abstract

Climatic warming is often predicted to reduce wheat yield and grain quality in China. However, direct evidence is still lacking. We conducted a three-year experiment with a Free Air Temperature Increase (FATI) facility to examine the responses of winter wheat growth and plant N accumulation to a moderate temperature increase of 1.5°C predicted to prevail by 2050 in East China. Three warming treatments (AW: all-day warming; DW: daytime warming; NW: nighttime warming) were applied for an entire growth period. Consistent warming effects on wheat plant were recorded across the experimental years. An increase of ca. 1.5°C in daily, daytime and nighttime mean temperatures shortened the length of pre-anthesis period averagely by 12.7, 8.3 and 10.7 d (P<0.05), respectively, but had no significant impact on the length of the post-anthesis period. Warming did not significantly alter the aboveground biomass production, but the grain yield was 16.3, 18.1 and 19.6% (P<0.05) higher in the AW, DW and NW plots than the non-warmed plot, respectively. Warming also significantly increased plant N uptake and total biomass N accumulation. However, warming significantly reduced grain N concentrations while increased N concentrations in the leaves and stems. Together, our results demonstrate differential impacts of warming on the depositions of grain starch and protein, highlighting the needs to further understand the mechanisms that underlie warming impacts on plant C and N metabolism in wheat.

GWAS for Fusarium Head Blight Related Traits in Winter Wheat (Triticum Aestivum L.) in an Artificially Warmed Treatment

“…Li et al [35], evaluating the effects of soil warming in wheat, observed an increase in yield. Similar results were observed by Tian et al [33] in an experiment with air temperature increase tested in winter wheat. Högy et al [8] under elevated soil temperature observed no change in grain yield of barley.…”

“…We observed that increasing the temperature by 1.8 • C and 2.0 • C in 2016 and 2017 respectively, reduced the length of the winter wheat growing period (Table 1). Other researchers have reported field studies simulating increases in air temperature that showed an effect on wheat phenology by reducing the pre-anthesis period [32,33]. In another study, soil warming conditions have shown a shortening of the total crop growing season in wheat [7].…”

Effect of Rht alleles on wheat grain yield and quality under high temperature and drought stress during booting and anthesis

“…Genotypes which were insensitive to GA (severe dwarf) resulted in improved grain quality characteristics. The present study demonstrated that the grain N concentration was associated with an increase in temperature, which is consistent with the some recent studies (Haberle et al 2008;Farooq et al 2011;Asseng et al 2014;Tian et al 2014). Hasanuzzaman et al (2013) also found that heat stress during grain filling increased both N and S concentrations.…”

The acclimation of leaf photosynthesis of wheat and rice to seasonal temperature changes in T‐FACE environments

“…Because the response of crop development to temperature is nonlinear (Yin, Kropff, McLaren, & Visperas, ) and growth temperature was closer to the optimum temperature for rice than for wheat (Table , Figure S1), wheat responded more strongly to the temperature increments in CT+ and C+T+ treatments, compared with rice. This was shown in earlier T‐FACE studies where the increase in daily average canopy temperature by 1.5–2.0°C advanced flowering or maturity by 10–13 days for wheat (Cai et al, ; Fang, Su, Liu, Tan, & Ren, ; Tian et al, ), but only shortened the pre‐flowering phase by 3 days for rice (Cai et al, ). As a result, largely shortened pre‐flowering phase by CT+ and C+T+ treatments shifted the growth period to a cooler period of the natural season for wheat (Cai et al, ; Tan, Zhou, Lv, Guo, & Ren, ; Tian et al, ).…”