This Research Topic has been developed by the
“IV Symposium on Physiology and Breeding of Cereals” conference being held on the 16-17th December in Pamplona, Spain. However, submissions are also warmly welcomed from non-attendees.
Food security is threatened by the impact of climate change on agriculture in a context of increasing demand (due to population growth, with increased individual demands, and alternative use for crop production including biofuels). Over the next few decades, climate change will affect quantity and quality of field crops through compound effects of elevated atmospheric CO2, and changing temperature and rainfall patterns. Cereals, legumes and other field crops contribute to a substantial part of world’s plant-derived food production. Despite the efforts made by breeding and crop management approaches, field crop production has stagnated in many regions of the world in recent years. Among others, a reduction in precipitation and a rise in ambient temperatures have been proposed as major factors explaining this stagnation in crop yields.
To keep up with near-future food demand, it is crucial to improve our knowledge of factors determining crop yield under a wide range of growing conditions. Despite its importance, our current understanding of the impact of environmental conditions on sustainable and more efficient crop performance is likely incomplete, specifically under interacting stress conditions. This Research Topic aims to publish papers analysing approaches to tackle crop breeding and management strategies to enhance yield and quality attributes of crops, and on their mechanistic causes under a wide range of environmental scenarios.
This Research Topic will focus on crop physiology and breeding under a changing global climate. In particular, we’re interested in:
• Multidisciplinary research manuscripts at different scales of agronomy, physiology, high-throughput phenotyping techniques and breeding ranging from the gene to the crop levels.
• Studies, involving the combination of multiple stresses (biotic and abiotic), fluctuating environments, and combinations of multiple study tools in plant agronomy and biology addressed in an integrative way.
• Meta-analyses manuscripts reporting data on crop development under a variety of environmental conditions.
• Contributions must clearly attest to the prospects of the study for its applicability for increasing crop productivity, nutritional value, and/or land-use efficiency under field conditions.
Please note: descriptive studies that report responses of growth, yield or quality to agronomical treatments will not be considered if they do not progress physiological understanding of these responses.