Crop adaptation to climate change as a consequence of long-term breeding

Abstract

Major global crops in high-yielding, temperate cropping regions are facing increasing threats from the impact of climate change, particularly from drought and heat at critical developmental timepoints during the crop lifecycle. Research to address this concern is frequently focused on attempts to identify exotic genetic diversity showing pronounced stress tolerance or avoidance, to elucidate and introgress the responsible genetic factors or to discover underlying genes as a basis for targeted genetic modification. Although such approaches are occasionally successful in imparting a positive effect on performance in specific stress environments, for example through modulation of root depth, major-gene modifications of plant architecture or function tend to be highly context-dependent. In contrast, long-term genetic gain through conventional breeding has incrementally increased yields of modern crops through accumulation of beneficial, small-effect variants which also confer yield stability via stress adaptation. Here we reflect on retrospective breeding progress in major crops and the impact of long-term, conventional breeding on climate adaptation and yield stability under abiotic stress constraints. Looking forward, we outline how new approaches might complement conventional breeding to maintain and accelerate breeding progress, despite the challenges of climate change, as a prerequisite to sustainable future crop productivity.

Tackling G × E × M interactions to close on-farm yield-gaps: creating novel pathways for crop improvement by predicting contributions of genetics and management to crop productivity

“…Many of the predicted changes in the structure of the TPE, as a consequence of climate change scenarios, are anticipated to impact the relative importance and contributions of traits to crop yield productivity (e.g. see multiple chapters in Yadav et al 2011;Chapman et al 2012;Hammer et al 2020;Snowdon et al 2020). These situations preempt changes in the trait targets required to sustain genetic gain for crop productivity.…”

“…Such advanced knowledge provides feedback to breeders to guide design and refinement of the MET stages of breeding programs (Messina et al 2020a). Breeders could in turn explore potential sources of novel genetic variation for traits contributing to improved performance in projected future Environment-Management targets (Hammer et al 2020;Snowdon et al 2020).…”

“…Farmers must also manage the risk of crop failures (yield and quality) due to the occurrence of extreme environmental conditions. Breeders and agronomists recognise the potential for Genotype-by-Environment-by-Management (G × E × M) interactions (Messina et al 2009 ; Snowdon et al 2020 ). However, to date the magnitude of the G × E × M factorial has made it impractical to design breeding programs or agronomy research programs to deal with G × E × M interactions explicitly at all stages of the crop improvement process.…”

Spatial Super Resolution of Real-World Aerial Images for Image-Based Plant Phenotyping

“…Stable global food production is threatened by changing and increasingly volatile environmental conditions in food growing regions [2,3]. Breeding crop varieties that have both high yields and resilience to abiotic stress has the potential to overcome these challenges to global food production and stability [4]. New, data-driven techniques for crop breeding require large amounts of genomic and phenomic information [5].…”

Maize inbred line B96 is the source of large-effect loci for resistance to generalist but not specialist spider mites

“…mays ) provide more than half of human calories, yield losses to both abiotic and biotic factors are substantial, and can be synergistic (Deutsch et al 2018). Among abiotic factors, drought stress, which is often associated with elevated temperatures, is especially important, and is projected to become more so in many regions under current climate change projections (Snowdon et al 2020). Further, in spite of extensive pesticide use, as much as ∼20% of global maize production is lost due to herbivory by arthropod pests (Oerke 2006).…”