Engineering Climate-Change-Resilient Crops: New Tools and Approaches

Environmental adversities, particularly drought and nutrient limitation, are among the major causes of crop losses worldwide. Due to the rapid increase of the world’s population, there is an urgent need to combine knowledge of plant science with innovative applications in agriculture to protect plant growth and thus enhance crop yield. In recent decades, engineering strategies have been successfully developed with the aim to improve growth and stress tolerance in plants. Most strategies applied so far have relied on transgenic approaches and/or chemical treatments. However, to cope with rapid climate change and the need to secure sustainable agriculture and biomass production, innovative approaches need to be developed to effectively meet these challenges and demands. In this review, we summarize recent and advanced strategies that involve the use of plant-related cyanobacterial proteins, macro- and micronutrient management, nutrient-coated nanoparticles, and phytopathogenic organisms, all of which offer promise as protective resources to shield plants from climate challenges and to boost stress tolerance in crops.

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Improvement of Cereal Crops through Androgenesis and Transgenic Approaches for Abiotic Stress Tolerance to Mitigate the Challenges of Climate Change in Sustainable Agriculture

Climate Change and Plant Abiotic Stress Tolerance ◽

10.1002/9783527675265.ch29 ◽

2013 ◽

pp. 785-814

Author(s):

S.M. Shahinul Islam ◽

Israt Ara ◽

Narendra Tuteja

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Abiotic Stress ◽

Sustainable Agriculture ◽

Stress Tolerance ◽

Abiotic Stress Tolerance ◽

Cereal Crops

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Assessment of plant growth promoting activities and abiotic stress tolerance of Azotobacter chroococcum strains for a potential use in sustainable agriculture

Journal of soil science and plant nutrition ◽

10.4067/s0718-95162016005000060 ◽

2016 ◽

pp. 0-0 ◽

Cited By ~ 11

Author(s):

S Viscardi ◽

V Ventorino ◽

P Duran ◽

A Maggio ◽

S De Pascale ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Abiotic Stress ◽

Plant Growth ◽

Sustainable Agriculture ◽

Stress Tolerance ◽

Abiotic Stress Tolerance ◽

Azotobacter Chroococcum ◽

Plant Growth Promoting Activities ◽

Plant Growth Promoting ◽

Growth Promoting ◽

Potential Use

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Climate-Smart Approach for Sustainable Agriculture

International Journal of Sustainable Economies Management ◽

10.4018/ijsem.2021040104 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 10 (2) ◽

pp. 46-57

Author(s):

Nicolae Suvorov ◽

Alina Mădălina Stancu

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Sustainable Agriculture ◽

Natural Resources ◽

Fossil Fuels ◽

Green Revolution ◽

Agricultural Practices ◽

Animal Husbandry ◽

Chemical Treatments ◽

Traditional Agricultural Practices ◽

Agriculture And Food

The 21st century comes with a great challenge in terms of sustainable agriculture and food security, which is also a worldwide debated issue due to problems such as population growth, degradation of natural resources including loss of biodiversity and considerable soil degradation, and last but not least, climate change. In fact, climate change poses the greatest threat to agricultural systems and the health of ecosystems and natural balance. The green revolution comes as a lifesaver for the environment, streamlining the allocation of natural resources but at the same time involves huge costs in term of money, time, and labor. Due to the intensive use of fossil fuels, chemical treatments in agriculture, and animal husbandry, environmental problems such as climate change tend to become more pronounced resulting in negative environmental externalities globally. A smart approach to sustainable agriculture is to reinvent and innovate traditional agricultural practices in order to identify ways and possibilities to reduce the risks related to the use of pesticides in close connection with the health of ecosystems.

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Modelling ecosystem adaptation and dangerous rates of global warming

Emerging Topics in Life Sciences ◽

10.1042/etls20180113 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 3 (2) ◽

pp. 221-231 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Rebecca Millington ◽

Peter M. Cox ◽

Jonathan R. Moore ◽

Gabriel Yvon-Durocher

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Global Warming ◽

Diffusion Rate ◽

Individual Species ◽

Genetic Evolution ◽

Rates Of Change ◽

Rapid Climate Change ◽

Warming Climate ◽

Intraspecies Competition ◽

High Trait

Abstract We are in a period of relatively rapid climate change. This poses challenges for individual species and threatens the ecosystem services that humanity relies upon. Temperature is a key stressor. In a warming climate, individual organisms may be able to shift their thermal optima through phenotypic plasticity. However, such plasticity is unlikely to be sufficient over the coming centuries. Resilience to warming will also depend on how fast the distribution of traits that define a species can adapt through other methods, in particular through redistribution of the abundance of variants within the population and through genetic evolution. In this paper, we use a simple theoretical ‘trait diffusion’ model to explore how the resilience of a given species to climate change depends on the initial trait diversity (biodiversity), the trait diffusion rate (mutation rate), and the lifetime of the organism. We estimate theoretical dangerous rates of continuous global warming that would exceed the ability of a species to adapt through trait diffusion, and therefore lead to a collapse in the overall productivity of the species. As the rate of adaptation through intraspecies competition and genetic evolution decreases with species lifetime, we find critical rates of change that also depend fundamentally on lifetime. Dangerous rates of warming vary from 1°C per lifetime (at low trait diffusion rate) to 8°C per lifetime (at high trait diffusion rate). We conclude that rapid climate change is liable to favour short-lived organisms (e.g. microbes) rather than longer-lived organisms (e.g. trees).

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