Wheat in heat-stressed environments: irrigated, dry areas and rice-wheat farming systems

These are the fourth proceedings resulting from international conferences related to wheat production in warmer environments throughout the world. The meetings reported on in these proceedings were sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme and organized by the Agricultural Research Corporation of Sudan, the Wheat Research Centre of the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute, and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center. The early emphasis in this project was on the development of wheats more adapted to warmer areas, particularly nontraditional wheat producing areas in the tropics and subtropics. Later, more attention was given to improving the management technology for wheat under these hotter environments. In the published proceedings of the conferences in Mexico (1984), Thailand (1987), and Brazil (1990), one can see the progressive integration of disciplines, particularly breeders and physiologists/agronomists, and agronomists/soil scientists with pathologists and entomologists. These multi-disciplinary approaches are highly desirable to tackle the more complex problems emerging in agricultural production systems today. The present proceedings continue this trend and result from two international conferences organized to specifically address the problems of two heat-stress environments that had previously received less attention. The first, at Wad Medani, Sudan, was held 1­4 February, 1993. Wad Medani is one of the hottest wheat-producing areas in the world and the conference was chiefly focused on the problems of heat stress under very dry, irrigated environments. It is considered that the discussions of selection methodology, crop management, and plant protection will have relevance to similar environments elsewhere. The second conference was held at Dinajpur, Bangladesh, 12-16 February, 1993. Bangladesh has increased wheat production enormously since the mid-1970s and forms part of the huge rice-wheat rotation area that is estimated to cover some 12 million hectares in South and Southeast Asia. The conference discussed many of the problems unique to this rotation such as the tailoring of rice and wheat varieties to optimize total production, soil management for wheat following puddled rice, plant nutrition, particularly with reference to sustainability, and soilborne and foliar diseases. Both meetings highlighted the continuing efforts of wheat scientists to increase and stabilize wheat production in hot environments, and particularly indicated that wheat breeders are striving to reduce their dependence on purely empirical methodologies for selection for heat tolerance. Both meetings, too, indicated that improved crop, disease and pest management can radically reduce the effects of elevated temperatures on wheat yield. It is hoped these proceedings will be valuable reference material for wheat scientists in warmer, more marginal wheat production areas throughout the world.

402 pages