Improved drought tolerance in wheat is required to unlock the production potential of the Brazilian Cerrado

Abstract

Improving rainfed wheat cultivation in central Brazil, where the Cerrado biome (Brazilian savanna) is predominant, remains a bottleneck for future increases in domestic wheat production. In the Cerrado, the limited water availability during the wheat-growing season is an obstacle to increase wheat yield. To address this issue, the physiological and molecular drought response of wheat and the environmental conditions of this region must be better understood. In this review, we characterized the impact of drought on rainfed wheat production in the Cerrado. Based on the peculiarities of this environment, we suggest that certain traits should be prioritized in selection. These traits and their molecular basis are important to raise wheat yields in the Cerrado and also to improve food security in Brazil, one of the top wheat-importing countries in the world.

Choosing parent tropical wheat genotypes through genetic dissimilarity based on REML/BLUP

“…As there is a great potential for the expansion of wheat cultivation areas in tropical regions, there is a need to develop genotypes adapted to the edaphoclimatic particularities of these regions that also demonstrate high agronomic performance (Pereira et al 2019). With this in mind, the objectives of the present study were to evaluate wheat genetic diversity based on standardized average Euclidean distances calculated based on BLUP and to use the unweighted pairgroup method with arithmetic mean (UPGMA), Tocher, and principal component grouping methods to select the most promising parents to compose a crossing block.…”

Mixed model-based Jinks and Pooni method to predict segregating populations in wheat breeding

“…Brazil has a wheat deficit of approximately six million tons (CONAB 2021). However, the country has the potential to expand its wheat production, especially in the Brazilian Cerrado region (Pasinato et al 2018); hence, cultivars adapted to the climatic conditions of that region need to be developed (Pereira et al 2019).…”

Proteins from eggs of the spittlebug Mahanarva spectabilis (Hemiptera: Cercopidae) reveal clues about its diapause regulation

“…Most of the area cultivated with tropical forages in Brazil is under well-defined wet and dry seasons. In Central Brazil, a rainy season for most of spring and summer (October to March) commonly occurs followed by a period of lower precipitation in most of autumn and winter (from April to September) (Pereira et al, 2019). Around 80-90% of the annual precipitation is observed during the wet season (Assad et al, 1993) which enables the forage species to reach significantly higher yield and quality.…”