Accelerated adaptation of spring wheat to climate change necessary

Abstract

Associated with global warming environmental changes lead to an increase in the frequency of extreme weather conditions, while the enormously hot weather observed during the last years led to enhanced grain yield variability in many countries, to a gross production decrease, and growing in the number of the hungry in the world. For these reasons, the reducing the crop production industry dependence on weather fluctuations has to become the main task for agricultural science that will become even more relevant if to take into account the further increase in the population (up to 9.73 billion by 2064) as it will require an additional increase in agricultural production by more than 30%. The analysis of weather conditions in Samara region over a 31-year period in the decade context indicates significant negative changes in temperature conditions and precipitation during the notional vegetation of early grain crops (May-August). The near future forecast according to the linear regression equations (1990-2020) confirms a further temperature background increase during the notional vegetation to 22.1 °С on average per decade (+3.0 °С to the long-term average data for the 1980s) and a precipitation reduction to 113.2 mm (-49.8 mm). However, despite the high adaptive capabilities of cultivated crops, we believe that today it is necessary to correct the current breeding programs for high potential productivity, paying special attention to the creation of varieties with high drought and heat resistance that will require the search for new sources and methods of their identification.