Harnessing Resilience of Orphan Crops to the Effects of Drought and Heat: A Route Towards a Sustainable Agriculture

In this era of climate change that compromises food security, the combination of severe and prolonged drought and heat waves can have devastating consequences on agriculture, economy and social stability particularly in the vulnerable regions of the world. Thus, it will be challenging to feed the growing worldwide population that will reach 9.6 billion by 2050 considering that the temperatures are expected to exceed 2°C by the end of this century. In model crops, these abiotic stresses negatively impact plant development, particularly at vegetative and reproductive stages, leading to decrease in yield, yield component and seed micronutrients content. Although, taken individually, the genotypes which are tolerant to drought or heat stress do not necessary exhibit tolerance to the combination of these stresses due to their specific effects on cellular process when they are both acting. Therefore, there is a need to integrate the recent advances performed in physiology, biochemistry, omics, micromics technologies and artificial intelligence to enhance our understanding of the mechanisms that govern tolerance of these abiotic constraints, and develop smart climate varieties for improving global food security.

The objectives of this Research Topic are to enhance our understanding of the mechanisms controlling drought or heat stresses tolerance in orphan crops by focusing on:

- identifying physiological mechanisms involved in tolerance of drought and heat stresses, and of their combined effects;
- determining the biochemical and molecular mechanisms controlling these constraints;
- using omics (including epigenomics) and micromics approaches to identify relevant traits;
- using conventional or modern breeding methods including gene editing and nanotechnologies to develop tolerant crops and dissect traits;
- integrating artificial intelligence approach to identify smart-climate orphan crops or to dissect relevant traits.

Keywords: heat, drought, plant development, orphan crops, sustainable agriculture, drought stress, drought tolerance, heat tolerance, omics, micromics

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