New agricultural wheat frontier in Brazil: Envirotypes applied in the adaptability and stability of wheat genotypes in contrasting environments

Abstract

Global climate changes can dramatically impact wheat production in Brazil's Cerrado biome, considered a new wheat farming frontier. Therefore, new approaches are needed to better understand the G×E interaction in environments with high climate variations. Here, we integrate envirotyping, adaptability, and stability techniques to better understand the G×E interaction and provide new insights for the recommendation of tropical wheat genotypes that can perform well in hotter and drier environments. Thirty-six wheat genotypes were evaluated for grain yield in eight field trials in 2018, 2019, and 2020 in the Brazilian Cerrado region. There is strong evidence that even in irrigated conditions, temperatures > 30 ºC during the booting and heading/flowering stages dramatically reduce the grain yield. Two lines, VI14774 (GY = 3800 kg ha-1), and VI14980 (GY = 4093 kg ha-1) had better performance in the hotter environment (~ 22% and ~ 32% higher than the grand mean) and are potential germplasm sources for warmer environments at the boosting and heading/flowering stages. Overall, this study provides new insights on how the environment typing can be useful to better understand the genotype-by-environment interaction and help to breed new climate-resilient wheat cultivars for the cerrado region. In this study, the REML/BLUP and GGE Biplot methods highly correlate in terms of genotype classification for selection and recommendation purposes. The genotypes VI 14127, VI 14197, VI 14026, and BRS 264 are the closest to a hypothetical ideal genotype.

Achieving wheat self-sufficiency in Brazil

“…If fields in Cerrado are irrigated, wheat sown in the dry period of May can yield more than 6 t ha −1 [10]. It is noteworthy that a wheat yield of 9.6 t ha −1 was recently achieved in Cerrado after a 119 day growth period with irrigation, setting a world record for daily productivity of 80.9 kg ha −1 d −1 [12].…”

“…Triticum), a major cause of yield losses in Brazil [9]. For example, field experiments with rainfed wheat in Cerrado consistently show yields below 2 t ha −1 with early March sowing, while yields sown later than April reach up to 5 t ha −1 , a difference attributed to reduced incidence of wheat blast in the drier period [8][9][10][11]. Mostly without irrigation, the average wheat yield in Cerrado currently (2013-2023) is 2.6 t ha −1 [1].…”