Meta‐analysis of drought and heat stress combination impact on crop yield and yield components

Episodes of prolonged drought coupled with heat waves (i.e. drought and heat combination) can have a devastating impact on agricultural production and crop yield. It is therefore not surprising that improving tolerance to drought and heat combination has been a major goal for breeders and biotech co...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physiologia plantarum 2021-01, Vol.171 (1), p.66-76
Main Authors: Cohen, Itay, Zandalinas, Sara I., Huck, Clayton, Fritschi, Felix B., Mittler, Ron
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agricultural production
Cereals
Crop production
Crop yield
Crops
Crops, Agricultural
Drought
Droughts
Edible Grain
Environmental stress
Heat stress
Heat waves
Heat-Shock Response
Legumes
Life cycles
Meta-analysis
Metabolism
Plant breeding
Seeds
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Episodes of prolonged drought coupled with heat waves (i.e. drought and heat combination) can have a devastating impact on agricultural production and crop yield. It is therefore not surprising that improving tolerance to drought and heat combination has been a major goal for breeders and biotech companies. Although much is known about the physiological and molecular responses of vegetative tissues to a combination of drought and heat stress, less is known about the impact of this stress combination on yield and different yield components. Here, we used a meta‐analysis approach to synthesize results from over 120 published case studies of crop responses to combined drought and heat stress. Our findings reveal that drought and heat stress combination significantly impacts yield by decreasing harvest index, shortening the life cycle of crops, and altering seed number, size and composition. Furthermore, these impacts are more severe when the stress combination is applied during the reproductive stage of plants. We further identify differences in how legumes and cereals respond to the stress combination and reveal that utilizing C3 or C4 metabolism may not provide an advantage to plants during stress combinations. Taken together our study highlights a need to focus future studies, as well as breeding efforts, on crop responses to drought and heat combination at the reproductive stage of different crop species.
ISSN:0031-9317
1399-3054
DOI:10.1111/ppl.13203