Climate change

There is a feeling that hybrids are better adapted than open-pollinated cultivars to manage with climate change. However, scientists Lana et al. investigated maize cultivars responses to temperature and precipitation changes and report an equivalent or even better resilience of open-pollinated cultivars compared with hybrids to yield losses under adverse conditions.

Commercial oat cultivars produce higher yields in temperate regions than in dry and hot areas. Agronomists Sánchez-Martín et al. studied oat landraces and found that these wild relatives should outperform commercial varieties under harsh conditions.

How to increase grain yield and decrease the impact of agriculture on climate? Liu et al. found in the literature seven key farming practices that increase crop yields by 15-59%, decrease carbon footprints by 25-34% and decrease greenhouse gas emissions by 25-50%.

Perennial forage grasses are major species for agriculture and food security. Production of grasses is threatened by increasing drought periods in the context of climate change. Norton et al. review the knowledge of factors influencing plant drought survival. They propose solutions such as increasing the depth and density of grass root systems to strengthen dehydration avoidance, and identifying non-toxic endophyte strains compatible with summer-dormant cultivars of tall fescue to enhance drought survival.

Food production is actually facing issues of climate change, unstable markets and complex public policies. Agronomists and farmers therefore need new ideas to design alternative farming systems. Urruty et al. explain the four concepts of climate-smart agriculture : stability, robustness, vulnerability and resilience. They present methods to evaluate farming management using these concepts.

Safflower is a major crop used for flavoring foods, dyes, livestock feeds and medicine. However, safflower production is threatened by climate change that increases soil salinity and drought. To solve this issue, plant scientists Hussein et al. review the mechanisms of the impact of drought and salt on plants, and the strategies to enhance safflower resistance.

Industrial coffee plantations are warming our climate because too much fertilisers are applied. Capa et al. tested coffee cropping using various amounts of fertilisers. They found that cutting by half the fertiliser amounts is still economically and environmentally sustainable.

Milk and meat production highly depends on the availability of fodder, which is obtained by mowing grass in summer wet conditions. However, grass production is projected to decrease due to lower rainfall in the summer. The grassland surface is indeed already decreasing worldwide. In order to improve grassland management Dusseux et al. designed a new model named PaturMata to study grassland production under climate change.

Global warming is mainly due to the increase of carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentration in the atmosphere. Agriculture highly influences atmospheric CO₂ because plants and soils can sequester CO₂ or release CO₂. Researchers are thus trying to identify cropping practices, such as conservation tillage, that sequester CO₂ in plants and soils in order to decrease atmospheric CO₂ levels. Agronomists Motschenbacher et al. studied for the first time daily soil surface CO₂ in rice-based crop rotations with corn, soybean, and winter wheat.

Medicinal plants grown under drought stress produce much higher amounts of active substances thas the same plant species cultivated with sufficient water. This phenomenon was so far poorly understood. In a literature review, plant scientists Kleinwächter and Selmar deduce for the first time that a modification of the photosynthetic apparatus under drought stress is responsible for higher yields of medicinal substances. Such knowledge can be applied to enhance the production of spice and medicinal plants by applying moderate drought stress during cultivation.