A Predictive Study of the Redistribution of Some Bread Wheat Genotypes in Response to Climate Change in Egypt

Alhosein Hamada,Mohamed Saber,Mohammed Abdelaziz Sayed,Khaled M Ibrahim,Mohamed Tharwat Said

doi:10.3390/agronomy12010113

Alhosein Hamada, Mohamed Saber + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy12010113

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Abstract

Climate change and global warming have become the most significant challenges to the agricultural production worldwide, especially in arid and semiarid areas. The main purpose of plant breeding programs now is to produce a genetically wide range of genotypes that can withstand the adverse effects of climate change. Moreover, farmers have to reallocate their cultivars due to their ability to tolerate unfavorable conditions. During this study, two field experiments and climate analysis based on 150 years of data are conducted to reallocate some genotypes of bread wheat in respect to climate change based on their performance under drought stress conditions. Climatic data indicate that there is an increase in temperature over all Egyptian sites coupled with some changes in rain amount. Among the tested cultivars, cultivar Giza 160 was the perfect one, while cultivar Masr 03 was the weakest one. Susceptibility indices are a good tool for discovering the superior genotypes under unfavorable conditions and, interestingly, some of the cultivars with high performance were among the superior cultivars in more than one of the tested traits in this study. Finally, combining the climatic data and the experimental data, we can conclude that cultivars Giza 160 and Sakha 94 are suitable for growning in zones with harsh environments, such as the eastern desert and southern Egypt, while cultivars Gemmeza 11, Sahel 01, Sakha 98, Sids 12, and Sakha 93 are suitable for growning in zones with good growing conditions, such as the Nile Delta region and northern Egypt.

Highlights

Climate change and global warming are the biggest problems facing all the world due to their enormous effect on life resources
Our results are partially in accordance with those obtained by Bento et al [34], who pointed to different regional responses of wheat and barley to the climate changes expected in the future in Spain, and stated that, in the southernmost regions, the results indicated that the main yield driver is the spring maximum temperature, while in the north area, there is a larger dependence on the spring precipitation and early winter maximum temperature
There is no doubt that the world faces global warming and climate changes, and that we should modify our agricultural system to meet these challenges

Summary

Introduction

Climate change and global warming are the biggest problems facing all the world due to their enormous effect on life resources. Egypt’s ordinary climate is a semiarid climate with very little rainfall accompanied by hot, dry summers and moderate winters. The temperature the last summer exceeded 45 ◦C in the experimental site while it reached 41 ◦C in April during the wheat grain filling stage [1], resulting in a signifiant reduction in the grain yield [2]. Egypt has a rare and irregular rainfall during the winter season (from October to April). The annual rainfall varies from 200 mm as a maximum value in the northern coastal regions, decreases to about 50–100 mm in the Nile Delta region, and reaches a minimum of almost zero in the south, such as Assiut (the experimental site) [3]. Egypt’s part of the Nile water is controlled by an international agreement

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