Screening for Higher Grain Yield and Biomass among Sixty Bread Wheat Genotypes Grown under Elevated CO2 and High-Temperature Conditions

19 páginas, 4 figuras, 2 tablas

Global warming will inevitably affect crop development and productivity, increasing uncertainty regarding food production. The exploitation of genotypic variability can be a promising approach for selecting improved crop varieties that can counteract the adverse effects of future climate change. We investigated the natural variation in yield performance under combined elevated CO2 and high-temperature conditions in a set of 60 bread wheat genotypes (59 of the 8TH HTWSN CIMMYT collection and Gazul). Plant height, biomass production, yield components and phenological traits were assessed. Large variations in the selected traits were observed across genotypes. The CIMMYT genotypes showed higher biomass and grain yield when compared to Gazul, indicating that the former performed better than the latter under the studied environmental conditions. Principal component and hierarchical clustering analyses revealed that the 60 wheat genotypes employed different strategies to achieve final grain yield, highlighting that the genotypes that can preferentially increase grain and ear numbers per plant will display better yield responses under combined elevated levels of CO2 and temperature. This study demonstrates the success of the breeding programs under warmer temperatures and the plants’ capacity to respond to the concurrence of certain environmental factors, opening new opportunities for the selection of widely adapted climate-resilient wheat genotypes.

This research was supported by the Spanish National R&D&I Plan of the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Projects AGL2013-41363-R and AGL2016-79589-R) and Ministry of Science and Innovation (Project PID2019-107154RB-100), as well as the regional government, the Junta de Castilla y León (Projects CSI083U16 and CSI260P20), with European Regional Development Fund, ERDF. Project “CLU-2019-05—IRNASA/CSIC Unit of Excellence”, funded by the Junta de Castilla y León and co-financed by the European Union (ERDF “Europe drives our growth”). E.L. Marcos-Barbero was the recipient of a pre-doctoral contract from the Junta de Castilla y León (E-37-2017-0066125)

Peer reviewed