Abstract
Drought stress during reproductive development could drastically reduce wheat grain number and yield, but quantitative evaluation of such an effect is unknown under climate change. The objectives of this study were to evaluate potential yield benefits of drought tolerance during reproductive development for wheat ideotypes under climate change in Europe, and to identify potential cultivar parameters for improvement. We used the Sirius wheat model to optimize drought-tolerant (DT) and drought-sensitive (DS) wheat ideotypes under a future 2050 climate scenario at 13 contrasting sites, representing major wheat growing regions in Europe. Averaged over the sites, DT ideotypes achieved 13.4% greater yield compared with DS, with higher yield stability. However, the performances of the ideotypes were site dependent. Mean yield of DT was 28-37% greater compared with DS in southern Europe. In contrast, no yield difference (≤1%) between ideotypes was found in north-western Europe. An intermediate yield benefit of 10-23% was found due to drought tolerance in central and eastern Europe. We conclude that tolerance to drought stress during reproductive development is important for high yield potentials and greater yield stability of wheat under climate change in Europe.
Highlights
Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is one of the key staple crops for global food security, providing about 20% of the total dietary calories and protein needs, with about 730 million tons of annual production from around 2.1 million km2 harvested area globally (Shiferaw et al, 2013; FAO, 2016)
A medium wheat yield of around 13–15 t ha−1 was observed at other sites.When the site-specific performance of DT was compared with DS, simulated wheat yields of DT were 28–37% greater compared with DS at SL, LL, and TR, with the highest potential yield benefit of 37% for DT at SL
Higher yield potential of the DT compared with the DS ideotype under future climatic condition could be linked to a greater number of grains for the DT ideotype.The number of fertile grains setting during reproductive development was reduced by drought stress for the DS ideotype, depending on the level of drought stress at different sites, whereas the primary grain setting number remained unaffected for DT due to drought tolerance during reproductive development
Summary
Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is one of the key staple crops for global food security, providing about 20% of the total dietary calories and protein needs, with about 730 million tons of annual production from around 2.1 million km harvested area globally (Shiferaw et al, 2013; FAO, 2016). Of yield losses and even crop failure will increase in Europe under the future climatic conditions (Trnka et al, 2014, 2015) Drought affects both source and sink strengths, leading to source- and sink-limited yield reduction of up to 92% in wheat, depending on the crop growth stage, duration, and intensity of drought stress (Farooq et al, 2014; Semenov et al, 2014). The potential grain number in wheat can be reduced considerably further even by a short spell of drought during meiosis and gametogenesis due to male and female sterility (Lalonde et al, 1997; Ji et al, 2010; Dolferus et al, 2011; Barber et al, 2015; Onyemaobi et al, 2017). Malfunction and irreversible abortion of male and female reproductive organs and gametophytes are the main reasons for drought-induced male and female infertility in wheat (Saini, 1997; Ji et al, 2010; de Storme and Geelen, 2014; Dong et al, 2017; Onyemaobi et al, 2017), and reduced viability of gametophytes due to drought stress decreases the final fertile grain number (Lalonde et al, 1997; Saini, 1997; Ma et al, 2017)
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