Yield stability for cereals in a changing climate

Abstract

Abstract. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) forecasts a 34% increase in the world population by 2050. As a consequence, the productivity of important staple crops such as cereals needs to be boosted by an estimated 43%. This growth in cereal productivity will need to occur in a world with a changing climate, where more frequent weather extremes will impact on grain productivity. Improving cereal productivity will, therefore, not only be a matter of increasing yield potential of current germplasm, but also of improving yield stability through enhanced tolerance to abiotic stresses. Successful reproductive development in cereals is essential for grain productivity and environmental constraints (drought, cold, frost, heat and waterlogging) that are associated with climate change are likely to have severe effects on yield stability of cereal crops. Currently, genetic gains conferring improved abiotic stress tolerance in cereals is hampered by the lack of reliable screening methods, availability of suitable germplasm and poor knowledge about the physiological and molecular underpinnings of abiotic stress tolerance traits.

Significant decrease in yield under future climate conditions: Stability and production of 138 spring barley accessions

“…Stability is often found in accessions with a low average grain yield (Becker and Leon, 1988;Powell et al, 2012) as for 'Calisi', 'Moscou', and 'Oslo' in the present study. Interesting though, these three accessions, one modern cultivar and two landraces, showed high yields in the two-factor treatment but not in the ambient treatment, indicating that the response under future conditions cannot be depicted from the current status.…”

“…Most likely, the decreased grain yield is caused by concerted elevated temperature and water shortage leading to oxidative and osmotic stress. Treatments including elevated temperature likely experience greater vapor pressure deficit and increased demand for water uptake possibly leading to drought stress (Barnabás et al, 2008;Powell et al, 2012). Additionally, in a pot setup, as in the present study, soil temperature approximates air temperature, which further increased evaporation of soil water.…”

“…Also the methodical complexity in the search for tolerance to conditions not earlier experienced by any crop is challenging. As emphasized by Powell et al (2012), the utilization of genetic resources with tolerance to climate factors is impeded by lack of reliable and cost efficient screening methods.…”

Evolutionary Effects on Morphology and Agronomic Performance of Three Winter Wheat Composite Cross Populations Maintained for Six Years under Organic and Conventional Conditions

“…The challenges of climate change, increasing demand for finite resources, and population growth are calling for a paradigm shift in resource use [1,2] combined with new, different and efficient strategies to face the challenges of climate change [3,4]. Diverse farming systems have shown to be more resilient in the face of perturbations and buffer extreme climatic events and adverse growing conditions to a wider extent than large monocultures do [3,5,6].…”

Achieving Water and Food Security in 2050: Outlook, Policies, and Investments

“…Other authors suggest that advances in plant genetics, agronomy, biotechnology, and animal science will provide the improvements needed in crop and livestock technology to achieve further increases in yields [136][137][138][139][140][141][142][143][144]. However, some authors question whether the needed advances can be developed, tested, and implemented broadly within the time available between now and 2050 [145].…”