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What is ‘drought stress’ and what are options to increase crop yield?

Code: 9781801466806
Publication date: 26/12/2022
Extent: 20 pages

Contributions by: Thomas R. Sinclair, North Carolina State University, USA; and Michel E. Ghanem, Centre de coopération internationale en recherche agronomique pour le développement (CIRAD), France and Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, Morocco

Chapter synopsis: ‘Drought’ is vague and ill-defined term that fails to account for the temporal dynamics through the growing seasons due to variable weather conditions, soil water status, plant development stage, and crop growth conditions. These variables all lead to an infinity of responses to water deficit. Instead of the common ‘static’ perspective of drought, it is proposed that a temporally dynamic framework is required within and across growing seasons at a given location. Yield changes in response to trait modification need to be expressed as probabilities obtained from either simulation study or extensive field observations. Such results allow important insight about yield changes that can occur under the economically challenging growing seasons when yields are especially low. Plant traits that result in water conservation early in the growing season in favor of increased availability of water during reproductive development tend to result in high probabilities of yield increase under water-deficit conditions.

DOI: 10.19103/AS.2022.0109.01
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Table of contents 1 Introduction 2 Axiom I: The term ‘drought’ is essentially meaningless in describing the temporal dynamics of ever-changing water deficit in the field and crop responses to the infinity of possible water-deficit scenarios 3 Axiom II: There is no universal ‘drought resistance’ trait that always results in yield increase 4 Axiom III: Be wary of ‘drought trait’ suggestions that have not been subjected to a probabilistic analysis using realistic varying weather scenarios 5 Axiom IV: Be wary of simplistic hypotheses for improving drought resilience such as osmotic adjustment 6 Proposition A: Be wary of phenomenological equations for insight about the mechanistic basis for overcoming water deficit 7 Proposition B: A more mechanistic description of yield under water deficit 8 Proposition C: Increase effectiveness of water use as a result of plant traits resulting in early-season water conservation 9 Proposition D: Responsiveness to vapor pressure deficit to achieve early-season water conservation 10 Conclusion: A renewed perspective for increasing crop drought resilience 11 References

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