Climatic adaptation as priority of sustainable development of the agrifood system in the southern regions of Russia

The article presents current and prospective estimates of the climatic changes parameters and their contradictory impact on the productivity of the agrifood system in the country’s southern regions. In the period up to 2030-2050, against the background of an increase in heat supply and duration of crop season, a mixed arid-humid type of moistening will have been predicted with an increase in aridization towards an increase in the frequency of droughts, including soil ones, as well as increased harmfulness of certain types of agricultural pests and pathogens. A new climate-adapted paradigm of sustainable development of the agrifood system in the South of Russia, based on Climate-Smart Agriculture, is proposed. The priority measures of climatic adaptation of the agrifood system in the South of Russia are grounded in connection with the growth of the spacing of winter crops, heat-loving, fruit and berry crops, vineyards; water-saving and moisture-retaining technologies; phytosanitary measures for the prevention and control of climate-dependent pests; agrotechnical methods of increasing the adaptive potential of crops to climate change; climate-adaptive schemes for the use of pastures; engineering of highly productive and climate-resistant agrophytocenoses and agroecosystems. Measures to stimulate climatic adaptation of the agrifood system in the South of the Russian Federation should involve the development and inclusion in the sectoral State Program of the Russian Federation of the Adaptation of Agriculture of the Constituent Entities of the South of the Russian Federation to Climate Change pilot section with an annual competition of regional agro-climatic projects based on budget COFUND; financing farms for the implementation of climate-adapted and related agricultural activities, climate insurance.

Looking for the needle in a downsized haystack: Whole-exome sequencing unravels how selection and gene flow have shaped climatic adaptation in Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii)

The widespread Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco) occurs along a steep gradient of diverse climates throughout its natural range, which is expected to result in spatially varying selection to local climate conditions. However, phenotypic signals of climatic adaptation can often be confounded, because unraveled clines covary with signals caused by neutral evolutionary processes such as gene flow and genetic drift. Here, we present phenotypic and genotypic data from a common garden experiment showing a putative signal of adaptation to climate after trees have been growing for 40 years in a common environment. Sixteen Douglas-fir provenances originating from a North-to-South gradient of approx. 1,000 km were analyzed and genomic information was obtained from exome capture, which resulted in an initial genomic dataset of >90,000 single nucleotide polymorphisms. We used a restrictive and conservative filtering approach which permitted us to include only SNPs and individuals in environmental association analysis (EAA) that were free of potentially confounding effects (LD, relatedness among trees, heterozygosity deficiency and deviations from Hardy-Weinberg proportions). We used four conceptually different genome scan methods based on FST outlier detection and gene-environment association in order to disentangle truly adaptive SNPs from neutral SNPs and found that a relatively small proportion of the exome showed a truely adaptive signal (0.01-0.17%) when population substructuring and multiple testing was accounted for. Nevertheless, the unraveled SNP candidates showed significant relationship with climate at provenance origins which strongly suggests that they have most likely featured adaption in Douglas-fir across a steep climatic gradient. Two SNPs were independently found by three of the employed algorithms and one could be assigned with high probability to a Picea abies homolog gene involved in circadian clock control as was also found in Populus balsamifera.

Historical Introgression from Wild Relatives Enhanced Climatic Adaptation and Resistance to Pneumonia in Sheep

How animals, particularly livestock, adapt to various climates and environments over short evolutionary time is of fundamental biological interest. Further, understanding the genetic mechanisms of adaptation in indigenous livestock populations is important for designing appropriate breeding programs to cope with the impacts of changing climate. Here, we conducted a comprehensive genomic analysis of diversity, interspecies introgression, and climate-mediated selective signatures in a global sample of sheep and their wild relatives. By examining 600K and 50K genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism data from 3,447 samples representing 111 domestic sheep populations and 403 samples from all their seven wild relatives (argali, Asiatic mouflon, European mouflon, urial, snow sheep, bighorn, and thinhorn sheep), coupled with 88 whole-genome sequences, we detected clear signals of common introgression from wild relatives into sympatric domestic populations, thereby increasing their genomic diversities. The introgressions provided beneficial genetic variants in native populations, which were significantly associated with local climatic adaptation. We observed common introgression signals of alleles in olfactory-related genes (e.g., ADCY3 and TRPV1) and the PADI gene family including in particular PADI2, which is associated with antibacterial innate immunity. Further analyses of whole-genome sequences showed that the introgressed alleles in a specific region of PADI2 (chr2: 248,302,667–248,306,614) correlate with resistance to pneumonia. We conclude that wild introgression enhanced climatic adaptation and resistance to pneumonia in sheep. This has enabled them to adapt to varying climatic and environmental conditions after domestication.