Abstract
Climate change can decrease the global maize productivity and grain quality. Maize crop requires an optimal temperature for better harvest productivity. A suboptimal temperature at any critical stage for a prolonged duration can negatively affect the growth and yield formation processes. This review discusses the negative impact of temperature extremes (high and low temperatures) on the morpho-physiological, biochemical, and nutritional traits of the maize crop. High temperature stress limits pollen viability and silks receptivity, leading to a significant reduction in seed setting and grain yield. Likewise, severe alterations in growth rate, photosynthesis, dry matter accumulation, cellular membranes, and antioxidant enzyme activities under low temperature collectively limit maize productivity. We also discussed various strategies with practical examples to cope with temperature stresses, including cultural practices, exogenous protectants, breeding climate-smart crops, and molecular genomics approaches. We reviewed that identified quantitative trait loci (QTLs) and genes controlling high- and low temperature stress tolerance in maize could be introgressed into otherwise elite cultivars to develop stress-tolerant cultivars. Genome editing has become a key tool for developing climate-resilient crops. Moreover, challenges to maize crop improvement such as lack of adequate resources for breeding in poor countries, poor communication among the scientists of developing and developed countries, problems in germplasm exchange, and high cost of advanced high-throughput phenotyping systems are discussed. In the end, future perspectives for maize improvement are discussed, which briefly include new breeding technologies such as transgene-free clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated (Cas)-mediated genome editing for thermo-stress tolerance in maize.
Highlights
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.Climate change is threatening food security across the globe [1]
In these regions, when maize crop is exposed to cold stress, the growth rate tends to reduce while growth duration is prolonged
The maize crop is quite sensitive to low temperatures and requires fairly high temperatures for optimum growth and production
Summary
Farmers sow maize early to escape heat stress at the reproductive stage, but plants are exposed to low soil temperature (below 10 occurs because of seedling a strong decline in metabolite transport andsoil photosynthetic °C) during early establishment. In maize production, a comprehensive set of adstress at the reproductive stage, but plants are exposed to low soil temperature We review the impacts of both heat and cold stresses on maize resilient genotypes) and an improved understanding of the genetic, physiological, and production and elucidate recent developments in improving its performance. Usually experience biotic and abiotic stresses simultaneously photosynthetic damage thedifferent biological membranes, affect nutrient uptake, and that cause many morphological and physiological perturbations, resulting in stunted plant growth and reduced grain yields [21,22]. Maize yield loss can be sudden, huge, and irreversible
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