Preparing crop plants for climate change

Climate change scenarios predict that crops will be at increased risk in the years to come, due to drought and high temperatures. There is an urgent need for new cultivars and strategies to mitigate this threat to global food security.

The 'Drought-tolerant yielding plants' (DROPS) project is developing new approaches to enhance water-use efficiency and improve yield in plants experiencing drought conditions. Researchers modelled plant performance in a range of environmental scenarios based on current and future climates. Project partners used maize, durum wheat and bread wheat to investigate four traits: seed abortion rate, vegetative growth maintenance, root system architecture and transpiration efficiency.

The natural variation of the four traits was explored in order to identify the regions in the genome that control them under a range of drought conditions and temperatures. For that, panels of genotypes with wide genetic origins have been analysed in novel phenotyping platforms for detailed characterization of target traits, and in tens of fields over Europe with contrasting scenarios of drought and temperatures. Consistent regions of the genome have been identified that significantly improve plant performance under naturally-occurring stressing conditions. The relevance of the involved 'versions of genes' (alleles) is tested in hundreds of climatic scenarios via crop modelling. This allows identification of combination of alleles associated with better yields and water use efficiency in different regions of Europe, in current and future climate scenarios.

Finally, a major output of DROPS is a comprehensive database of phenotypic data associated with genomic information, usable to the broader scientific community together with new phenotyping, modelling and statistical tools.

This work provides scientists and plant breeders with improved knowledge and tools to enhance crop plant water-use efficiency. It will help support crop improvement strategies through developing cultivars better able to withstand unfavourable climatic scenarios.