Introduction
Since humans sowed the first crop seeds, the hope of farmers has been that there will be sufficient water to obtain a grain yield. While management regimes, including irrigation, have resulted in progress toward this hope [1], until very recently, there has been little evidence of plant modifications for altering plant genetics in order to improve crop yield under drought [2]. In fact, during the last century, the push for ever increasing yields is likely to have resulted in greater water requirements and, consequently, an increased vulnerability to drought.
The development of technology to identify and transform genes related to plant response to water deficit, including grain legumes, has resulted in renewed optimism regarding the age-old hope of plant modification that can decrease crop vulnerability to drought. For example, a recent review by Gupta et al. [3] lists gene-linked physiological characteristics that have been hypothesized to result in such crop improvement. The challenge here, though, is that the fundamental physiology and especially the physics that make crop yields quantitatively dependent on the amount of water available to a crop have not changed. While plant modifications for static short-term water deficit may show advantages in controlled environments, the realities of grain legume production under temporally dynamic conditions in the field can severely limit, or even negate, the possible yield benefits of such trait alterations.
References
Sinclair, T.R.; Sinclair, C.J. Bread, Beer, and the Seeds of Change: Agriculture’s Imprint on World History; CAB International: Wallingford, UK, 2010. [Google Scholar]
Manavalan, L.P.; Nguyen, H.T. Drought tolerance in crops: Physiology to genomics. In Plant Stress Physiology; Shabala, S., Ed.; CAB International: Wallingford, UK, 2017. [Google Scholar]
Gupta, A.; Rico-Medina, A.; Caño-Delgado, A.I. The physiology of plant responses to drought. Science 2020, 368, 266–269. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
Journal: Plants Author: Sinclair and Ghanem
Introduction Since humans sowed the first crop seeds, the hope of farmers has been that there will be sufficient water to obtain a grain yield. While management regimes, including irrigation, have resulted in progress toward this hope [1], until very recently, there has been little evidence of plant modifications for altering plant genetics in order to improve crop yield under drought [2]. In fact, during the last century, the push for ever increasing yields is likely to have resulted in greater water requirements and, consequently, an increased vulnerability to drought. The development of technology to identify and transform genes related to plant response to water deficit, including grain legumes, has resulted in renewed optimism regarding the age-old hope of plant modification that can decrease crop vulnerability to drought. For example, a recent review by Gupta et al. [3] lists gene-linked physiological characteristics that have been hypothesized to result in such crop improvement. The challenge here, though, is that the fundamental physiology and especially the physics that make crop yields quantitatively dependent on the amount of water available to a crop have not changed. While plant modifications for static short-term water deficit may show advantages in controlled environments, the realities of grain legume production under temporally dynamic conditions in the field can severely limit, or even negate, the possible yield benefits of such trait alterations.
References