The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) forecasts a 34% increase in the world population by 2050. As a consequence, the productivity of important staple crops such as cereals needs to be boosted by an estimated 43%. This growth in cereal productivity will need to occur in a world with a changing climate, where more frequent weather extremes will impact on grain productivity. Improving cereal productivity will, therefore, not only be a matter of increasing yield potential of current germplasm, but also of improving yield stability through enhanced tolerance to abiotic stresses. Successful reproductive development in cereals is essential for grain productivity and environmental constraints (drought, cold, frost, heat and waterlogging) that are associated with climate change are likely to have severe effects on yield stability of cereal crops. Currently, genetic gains conferring improved abiotic stress tolerance in cereals is hampered by the lack of reliable screening methods, availability of suitable germplasm and poor knowledge about the physiological and molecular underpinnings of abiotic stress tolerance traits.
Yield stability for cereals in a changing climate.
N. Powell,Xuemei Ji,Rudabeh Ravash,Jane Edlington,R. Dolferus
Published 2012 in Functional Plant Biology
ABSTRACT
PUBLICATION RECORD
- Publication year
2012
- Venue
Functional Plant Biology
- Publication date
2012-08-01
- Fields of study
Agricultural and Food Sciences, Medicine, Biology, Environmental Science
- Identifiers
- External record
- Source metadata
Semantic Scholar, PubMed
CITATION MAP
EXTRACTION MAP
CLAIMS
CONCEPTS
- abiotic stress tolerance
Capacity of cereal plants to withstand non-living stresses such as drought, cold, frost, heat, and waterlogging.
- cereal crops
Staple grain crops considered in the paper as targets for improving productivity and stress resilience.
Aliases: cereals
- climate change
Long-term shifts in climate that are associated here with more frequent weather extremes and increased stress on cereal production.
- environmental constraints
Non-living environmental conditions discussed as threats to cereal growth and yield stability.
Aliases: abiotic stresses
- genetic gains
Improvements in crop performance achieved through breeding or selection over time.
- grain productivity
The amount of grain produced by cereal crops, treated here as the key production outcome of interest.
Aliases: grain yield
- physiological and molecular underpinnings
The biological processes and mechanisms that explain abiotic stress-tolerance traits in cereals.
Aliases: physiological and molecular mechanisms
- reproductive development
The developmental phase in cereals that leads to successful reproduction and grain formation.
- screening methods
Procedures used to identify plant material with desirable stress-tolerance characteristics.
- suitable germplasm
Plant genetic material available for breeding and evaluation of stress-tolerance traits.
Aliases: available germplasm
- yield stability
The ability of cereal crops to maintain productive grain yield across variable and stressful growing conditions.