Modeling winter survival in cereals: An interactive tool

Abstract

An interactive web‐based model (https://norstar.usask.ca/survivalmodel) that simulates winter survival in cereals has been developed for use by farmers, extension workers, plant breeders, and researchers. Consistent with our current understanding of low‐temperature (LT) gene regulation, the model is based on a series of equations describing phenological development, acclimation, dehardening, and damage due to LT stress. Low‐temperature tolerance is estimated on a daily basis relative to crown temperature, stage of phenological development, and cultivar LT tolerance potential. Acclimation proceeds until the start of the reproductive growth stage, which becomes a critical developmental switch that initiates the downregulation of LT tolerance gene expression. Environmental data can be uploaded and model input parameters revised to allow for simulation of genotypic differences and environmental conditions of special interest to users. Because the model is fully interactive, it can be used as a teaching tool that allows production risks, cause‐and‐effect processes, and genetic theories to be systematically investigated. In addition to encouraging more widespread use of the model, opening access to interested researchers will serve as a means of additional testing and validation allowing further refinements to be made. This will hopefully lead to increased prediction accuracy over a wider range of environmental conditions and a better understanding of the dynamic interactions involved in over‐winter survival of winter annual crops.

Winter Wheat Adaptation to Climate Change in Turkey

“…However, in most of these studies, 15-18 • C was determined as Topt for wheat. The Topt (15-18 • C) proposed by the new findings coincides with the upper limit where the VRN requirement can be met [53,54,56]. In other words, it is an interesting coincidence that the upper-temperature limit (15-18 • C) at which the VRN requirement is met, and the boundary where temperature is optimal (15-18 • C), are equivalent.…”

“…In interpreting the findings obtained from our study, 18 • C was accepted as the limit where high-temperature stress started [45,[52][53][54][55][56]. Declines ranging from 2.95% to 3.31% in the GY of WW, compared with SW, tested in our experiment, occurred for each one • C temperature increase above 18 • C. Research in [52,55] found that each one • C temperature increase caused decreases between 3.3% and 6.4% in the GY of wheat.…”

Perspectives on Low Temperature Tolerance and Vernalization Sensitivity in Barley: Prospects for Facultative Growth Habit

“…Furthermore, we recommend that comprehensive weather data be obtained at each site. These multi-location data, coupled with genotype and phenotype data, will be useful in validating and enhancing climate models, such as the one recently reported by Byrns et al (2020). Smaller subsets would also be amenable to controlled environment tests, where functional genomics approaches can complement GWAS (Fowler et al, 2001;Stockinger et al, 2007).…”

A review of crop frost damage models and their potential application to cover crops

“…An option to improve current models is to adapt to cover crops the modules available for the simulation of frost damage on annual crops like cereals (e.g. Byrns et al, 2020).…”

“…We present here a list of the selected frost damage models, while a brief model description can be found in Table 1: FROS-TOL (Bergjord et al, 2008); winter survival model (Byrns et al, 2020); model proposed by Lecomte et al (2003); ALFACOLD (Kanneganti et al, 1998); CERES-Wheat (Ritchie, 1991); EPIC (Sharpley and Williams, 1990); APSIM-Wheat (Zheng et al, 2015); and STICS (Brisson et al, 2009). The first three models were originally designed for winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.), ALFACOLD is dedicated to alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.), while the other cropping system models simulate several different crops.…”