Plant tolerance to high temperature in a changing environment: scientific fundamentals and production of heat stress-tolerant crops

Abstract

Global warming is predicted to have a general negative effect on plant growth due to the damaging effect of high temperatures on plant development. The increasing threat of climatological extremes including very high temperatures might lead to catastrophic loss of crop productivity and result in wide spread famine. In this review, we assess the impact of global climate change on the agricultural crop production. There is a differential effect of climate change both in terms of geographic location and the crops that will likely show the most extreme reductions in yield as a result of expected extreme fluctuations in temperature and global warming in general. High temperature stress has a wide range of effects on plants in terms of physiology, biochemistry and gene regulation pathways. However, strategies exist to crop improvement for heat stress tolerance. In this review, we present recent advances of research on all these levels of investigation and focus on potential leads that may help to understand more fully the mechanisms that make plants tolerant or susceptible to heat stress. Finally, we review possible procedures and methods which could lead to the generation of new varieties with sustainable yield production, in a world likely to be challenged both by increasing population, higher average temperatures and larger temperature fluctuations.

MAPK cascades and major abiotic stresses

“…Drought, salt and temperatures are closely related with overlapping physiological effects (Krasensky and Jonak 2012). High temperatures, for example, frequently come with drought and water deficits, aggravating the effects of salinity and osmotic shifts on plant cells (Bita and Gerats 2013;Xiong et al 1999). Salinity is also a common feature in arid and semiarid lands where plants are convicted to tolerate osmotic stress caused by both salinity and low water potential (Rengasamy 2006).…”

Genome-Wide Association Mapping of Fertility Reduction upon Heat Stress Reveals Developmental Stage-Specific QTLs in Arabidopsis thaliana

“…For the latter, the impact of abiotic and biotic stresses on yield should be investigated during both the vegetative and the generative phases of the plant's life cycle since both are strongly related to reproductive success. Temperature stress is one of the most detrimental abiotic stresses during the generative phase and reduced yields due to high temperatures during flowering have been reported for many species (Hedhly, 2011;Bita and Gerats, 2013).…”

Impacts of leaf age and heat stress duration on photosynthetic gas exchange and foliar nonstructural carbohydrates in Coffea arabica

“…Besides reducing water loss, this response may reflect the impact of damaged membrane integrity on the ability to maintain g s (Bita & Gerats, 2013). As discussed above, reduced g s would exacerbate the effects of heat stress on expanding leaves by further increasing their temperature and putting them at greater risk of additional heat‐induced damage.…”

“…This is not surprising because coffee reproduction is highly sensitive to heat (Bita & Gerats, 2013; Camargo, 1985; Camargo, 2010). Our results showed that even a short, sudden heat stress event can inhibit reproduction and have negative consequences for C. arabica productivity (Bunn et al., 2014; Davis et al., 2012).…”

“…The sharp but transient reduction in total NSC and starch at day 2 coincided with the treatment‐induced reductions in photosynthesis and F V / F M , indicating significant heat stress‐induced damage and reductions in carbohydrate production (Wahid et al., 2007). The decline in starch with no significant shifts in sucrose and glucose + fructose at day 2 may indicate the allocation of NSC to metabolic maintenance and repair in response to the 45‐min treatment (Bita & Gerats, 2013). This may also be due to increased respiration (Way & Yamori, 2014), as well as the remobilization of starch from source leaves to roots (Blessing, Werner, Siegwolf, & Buchmann, 2015), although we did not measure NSC in roots.…”