Abstract
To improve sustainability of agriculture, high yielding crop varieties with improved water use efficiency (WUE) are needed. Despite the feasibility of assessing WUE using different measurement techniques, breeding for WUE and high yield is a major challenge. Factors influencing the trait under field conditions are complex, including different scenarios of water availability. Plants with C3 photosynthesis are able to moderately increase WUE by restricting transpiration, resulting in higher intrinsic WUE (iWUE) at the leaf level. However, reduced CO2 uptake negatively influences photosynthesis and possibly growth and yield as well. The negative correlation of growth and WUE could be partly disconnected in model plant species with implications for crops. In this paper, we discuss recent insights obtained for Arabidopsis thaliana (L.) and the potential to translate the findings to C3 and C4 crops. Our data on Zea mays (L.) lines subjected to progressive drought show that there is potential for improvements in WUE of the maize line B73 at the whole plant level (WUEplant). However, changes in iWUE of B73 and Arabidopsis reduced the assimilation rate relatively more in maize. The trade-off observed in the C4 crop possibly limits the effectiveness of approaches aimed at improving iWUE but not necessarily efforts to improve WUEplant.
Highlights
Green Revolution technologies and significant expansion in the use of land, water, and other natural resources for agricultural purposes have led to a tripling in agricultural production between1960 and 2015 [1]
The results indicate genetic variation in the efficiencies of water use among maize lines and differences observed in WUEplant and towards the end of the progressive drought, all genotypes aincluded potentialinfor improvement of the water use efficiency (WUE)
Based on the intrinsic WUE (iWUE) values obtained at water-saturated soil, the iWUE increase in Arabidopsis and maize was approximately 100% and 40%, respectively, but water logging might be an issue at these high soil water content (SWC) levels
Summary
Green Revolution technologies and significant expansion in the use of land, water, and other natural resources for agricultural purposes have led to a tripling in agricultural production between. Global population growth increases the demand for food, feed, and fuel, which intensifies the pressure to improve water use efficiency (WUE) of crops [7,8]. Prediction of long-term biomass accumulation and water consumption, WUEplant , based on iWUE is even more uncertain given the possible differences in VPD and additional physiological processes such as dark respiration and photorespiration influencing the resulting biomass increase [19]. Despite these limitations, analysis of iWUE provides a convenient measure for the water efficiency of carbon capture. Water-conserving traits as imposed by higher WUE would be beneficial, provided growth and yield are not negatively affected
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