Impact of Climate Change on Crops Adaptation and Strategies to Tackle Its Outcome: A Review

Abstract

Agriculture and climate change are internally correlated with each other in various aspects, as climate change is the main cause of biotic and abiotic stresses, which have adverse effects on the agriculture of a region. The land and its agriculture are being affected by climate changes in different ways, e.g., variations in annual rainfall, average temperature, heat waves, modifications in weeds, pests or microbes, global change of atmospheric CO2 or ozone level, and fluctuations in sea level. The threat of varying global climate has greatly driven the attention of scientists, as these variations are imparting negative impact on global crop production and compromising food security worldwide. According to some predicted reports, agriculture is considered the most endangered activity adversely affected by climate changes. To date, food security and ecosystem resilience are the most concerning subjects worldwide. Climate-smart agriculture is the only way to lower the negative impact of climate variations on crop adaptation, before it might affect global crop production drastically. In this review paper, we summarize the causes of climate change, stresses produced due to climate change, impacts on crops, modern breeding technologies, and biotechnological strategies to cope with climate change, in order to develop climate resilient crops. Revolutions in genetic engineering techniques can also aid in overcoming food security issues against extreme environmental conditions, by producing transgenic plants.

Plant Cell Walls Tackling Climate Change: Biotechnological Strategies to Improve Crop Adaptations and Photosynthesis in Response to Global Warming

“…Secondly, by adapting plants to the consequences. The plant science community is achieving significant efforts in the study of adapting mechanisms for crops [10,11]. This could facilitate adapting crops that are already growing in our agroecosystems and avoid the introduction of non-native species.…”

“…However, it is still not clear exactly how the interactions between CW polymers relate to wall mechanics, and how transcription factors (TFs) impinge on intracellular structures during developmental processes in response to environmental signals. Many TFs such as MYBs, AP2/EREBP, WRKYs, MADS-box, or ERFs have been reported to play key functions in biotic and abiotic stress responses [10,[70][71][72][73][74][75][76]. Developmental programs are regulated by complex networks both at the transcriptional and post-transcriptional level, including, not yet fully explored, epigenetic switches [73,[77][78][79].…”

Forage Performance and Detection of Marker Trait Associations with Potential for Napier Grass (Cenchrus purpureus) Improvement

“…Production by the farmers, however, is affected by seasonal fluctuations of forage performance, both in terms of quantity and quality. The productivity of forage crops is also hampered by abiotic and biotic stresses [2,3]. Hence, several national research institutes are aiming to improve forage productivity and to provide new forage cultivars by the identification of adaptable, higher quality forage accessions, mainly through the introduction and evaluation of different options in their forage development programs [4,5].…”

Metabolomics: A Way Forward for Crop Improvement

“…Abiotic stresses are major limiting factors of agriculture production and can be described as any change in plants' growth conditions that adversely affect plant metabolism, normal plant development, and plant physiology. The main abiotic stresses that negatively regulate the plants' growth are drought, salinity, temperature extremes, waterlogging, heavy metal, and chilling [127]. Metabolomics has emerged as the most promising tool for investigating abiotic stress tolerance regulation in plant species.…”