Abstract
To deliver food security for the 9 billon population in 2050, a 70% increase in world food supply will be required. Projected climatic and environmental changes emphasize the need for breeding strategies that delivers both a substantial increase in yield potential and resilience to extreme weather events such as heat waves, late frost, and drought. Heat stress around sensitive stages of wheat development has been identified as a possible threat to wheat production in Europe. However, no estimates have been made to assess yield losses due to increased frequency and magnitude of heat stress under climate change. Using existing experimental data, the Sirius wheat model was refined by incorporating the effects of extreme temperature during flowering and grain filling on accelerated leaf senescence, grain number, and grain weight. This allowed us, for the first time, to quantify yield losses resulting from heat stress under climate change. The model was used to optimize wheat ideotypes for CMIP5-based climate scenarios for 2050 at six sites in Europe with diverse climates. The yield potential for heat-tolerant ideotypes can be substantially increased in the future (e.g. by 80% at Seville, 100% at Debrecen) compared with the current cultivars by selecting an optimal combination of wheat traits, e.g. optimal phenology and extended duration of grain filling. However, at two sites, Seville and Debrecen, the grain yields of heat-sensitive ideotypes were substantially lower (by 54% and 16%) and more variable compared with heat-tolerant ideotypes, because the extended grain filling required for the increased yield potential was in conflict with episodes of high temperature during flowering and grain filling. Despite much earlier flowering at these sites, the risk of heat stress affecting yields of heat-sensitive ideotypes remained high. Therefore, heat tolerance in wheat is likely to become a key trait for increased yield potential and yield stability in southern Europe in the future.
Highlights
A substantial increase in world food supply of 70–100% is required to feed an estimated 9 billion people by 2050 (Godfray et al, 2010)
This allowed us to quantify the uncertainty in assessing wheat yield potential as affected by future extreme weather events
It has been shown that susceptibility to high temperatures during anthesis and grain filling varies among wheat cultivars (Alghabari et al, 2014; Vara Prasad and Djanaguiraman, 2014)
Summary
A substantial increase in world food supply of 70–100% is required to feed an estimated 9 billion people by 2050 (Godfray et al, 2010). Because of limited possibilities to extend existing crop-growing areas, a considerable increase in crop productivity is needed to guarantee future food security (Parry et al, 2011; Reynolds et al, 2011). Wheat yields have increased significantly in the last century, mainly due to genetic improvements, higher fertilization rates and improved pest and diseases management (Semenov et al, 2012). Wheat crops are highly sensitive to environmental and climatic variations (Porter and Semenov, 2005). During the last two decades, the progress in wheat genetics has already been partly offset by changes in the European climate (Brisson et al, 2010; Lobell et al, 2011). Global warming, characterized by changing local weather patterns and increasing the frequency of extreme events, poses a major challenge to plant breeders
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