Climate change, its impact on crop production, challenges, and possible solutions

Abstract

Climate change poses serious threats to agriculture and food security, and extreme weather events have reduced crop productivity worldwide. Future projections predict that the average global temperature will rise by 2.0 to 6.4 °C and the increase in sea level will be 59 cm by the end of 21st century. The unprecedented rise in temperature has led to an increase in the incidence of heat waves, droughts, floods, and irregular patterns of precipitation. These changes have a dramatic impact on prevailing agricultural cropping systems, productivity, and food security of people regionally and globally. The change in climatic parameters have substantial effects on weeds, diseases, insect, and pests in different ways, and can result in an increase of their geographical distribution, number of generations, and survival during winter. Thus, to sustain the crop production on the eve of climate change is the main challenge. Therefore, adaptation measures are prerequisites to reduce the effects of climatic changes on production of agricultural crops. In this review, a brief insight has been given in the impact of climate change on agriculture and, the future challenges of climate change on the production of crops. In addition, integrated approaches, or recent developments for the improvement of crops such as breeding, transgenic approaches to biotechnology, and functional genomics, agronomic practices, cultivation of climate resilient crops, and nanotechnology for abiotic stress such as drought stress, temperature, heat, and salinity tolerance have also been discussed.

Recent Advancements in Mitigating Abiotic Stresses in Crops

“…Although the global climate change process is ongoing, it has significantly accelerated over the last century. The accumulation of greenhouse gases due to anthropogenic activities has led to global warming, contributing to an increase in the global temperature [4] by 0.9 • C since the 19th century [5]. Likewise, intense solar radiation during the day, promoting processes like evapotranspiration, causes an increase in the temperature.…”

“…This is significant because the commercial yield of maize crops can be reduced by 3-13% with just a 1 • C increase in mean seasonal temperature [7]. The exponential surge in global temperature has resulted in a rise in climate change events such as waterlogging, drought, erratic rainfall patterns, a decline in glaciers, strong typhoons and hurricanes, changes to animal habitats, the movement of plant habitats northward, and other extreme events [5]. As climate change bites harder, the occurrence of abiotic stress events is expected to increase, resulting in reduced agricultural yields.…”

“…Various conventional breeding methods, such as pedigree selection, recurrent selection, backcrossing, hybridization, and induced mutation, have been implemented by scientists to screen and identify cultivars under abiotic stresses (Table 1). It has been established that in various cereal crops, including wheat, rice, maize, sorghum, and legume crops, the mass screening and selection of cultivars for beneficial features under drought and salinity can increase yields [5]. Through the screening of different rice accessions under flooding stress, Indian accessions FR13A and FR43B and some Sri Lankan varieties such as Kurkaruppan, Goda Heenati, and Avalu were identified as having tolerance against waterlogging [20].…”

“…The utilization of plant growth regulators and osmoprotectants, including polyols, glycine betaine (GB), mannitol, salicylic acid (SA), and many others, has been shown to alleviate several environmental stresses in different crops during production by enhancing the antioxidant enzymes and osmotic adjustment [5,15] (Table 5). Under water-deficit conditions, using abscisic acid, uniconazole, brassinolide, and jasmonic acid exogenously increased plant productivity [117].…”

Potential Suitable Habitats of Chili Pepper in China under Climate Change

“…However, as the frequency and intensity of extreme weather have increased and are expected to accelerate with further climate warming, there is a growing concern for the adverse and possibly irreversible impacts on Earth's organisms and ecosystems [4]. Agricultural systems, including vegetable production, are highly dependent on specific environmental conditions, making them particularly vulnerable to climate change [5][6][7]. Estimates indicated that there could be an average reduction of 17% in crop yields for each one-degree Celsius rise in temperature [8].…”