Abstract
The 21st century presents many challenges to mankind, including climate change, fast growing human population, and serious concerns over food security. Wheat is a leading cereal crop that largely fulfills the global food needs. Low temperature stress accompanied by nutrient-starved soils is badly disrupting the source–sink relationship of wheat, thus causing an acute decline in final yield and deteriorating the grain quality. This review paper aimed to understand how low temperature stress affects wheat source–sink organs (i.e., leaves, roots, and spikes) and how phosphorus application reliefs in alleviating its harmful consequences. Also, we discussed mitigation strategies to enhance wheat capacity to adapt to varying temperature extremes and made rational recommendations based on modern agronomic and breeding approaches. Therefore, this study is likely to establish a solid foundation for improving the tolerance to low temperature stress and to improve its phosphorus utilization efficiency in wheat.
Highlights
To meet the dietary needs of 10 billion people by 2050, current food productivity will have to rise by 60% (Hickey et al, 2019)
It is reported that the leaf area index of winter wheat reduced by 43.8% on exposure to below 0°C for 24 h duration, as compared to control treatment (Liu et al, 2019a)
We summarized the damaging impacts of Low temperature stress (LTS) to wheat source–sink organs with respect to morphological, physiological, and molecular attributes (Tables 2, 3)
Summary
To meet the dietary needs of 10 billion people by 2050, current food productivity will have to rise by 60% (Hickey et al, 2019). As a vital source of plant protein, wheat is easy to be processed into various types of food products, consumed by billions of people, playing an important role in reducing hunger (Subedi et al, 2019; Wojtowicz et al, 2020). According to the latest IPCC report, the global temperature rise is expected to reach or exceed 1.5°C by the end of the 21st century (IPCC, 2021). Global warming increases the instability of the climate system, and extreme low and high temperature events occur frequently (Chen et al, 2019a). Low temperature stress (LTS) causes substantial decline in wheat yield in major wheat-growing regions of the world (e.g., Europe, China, the United States, and Australia; Table 1)
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