Crop Simulation Modeling Informed By Physiological Phenotyping Illuminate Context-Dependencies for Enhancing Wheat Drought Tolerance in Tunisia
(2019) 2019 ASA and CSSA Meeting — Location: San antonio (Texas) (10.November.2019)
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- Abstract
- Atmospheric vapor pressure deficit (VPD) is the main environmental driver of plant transpiration (TR). Because TR is concomitant with CO2 fixation and drives water use, breeding for specific modalities of TR response to VPD could enable increasing yields under a large spectrum of water availabilities. Two main bottlenecks currently limit the potential of this approach: i) effective high-throughput screening for these eco-physiological responses and ii) assigning genotypes with specific responses to appropriate production environment based on local weather. To address i) we developed a system for screening TR responses to VPD independent from confounding variation in temperature, enabling the identification of a substantial diversity among 54 wheat genotypes. Two main behaviors were identified, with the most contrasting genotypes exhibiting either an “aggressive” water use strategy (high slopes of linear TR responses to VPD) or a “water-saving” one (a segmented relationship whereby TR does not increase anymore starting from a VPD threshold). To address ii), we used a crop simulation modeling approach that we tested for the divergent conditions of Tunisia, a Mediterranean country where wheat drought tolerance is key for local food security. The analysis found that in the productive north, genotypes with aggressive water use would lead to yield increases of up to 15% with marginal gains in the rest of the country, as a result of using water that would be otherwise lost to evaporation. In contrast, due to photosynthetic limitations, water-saving genotypes would lead to yield penalties in the north but to major yield gains in the drought-prone center and south with gains as high as 30% in the food insecure region of Sidi Bouzid, where the Tunisian revolution started. Overall, this work indicates that highly contrasted drought tolerance strategies are needed even for small and globally drought-prone Mediterranean countries as a result of local context dependencies.
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Sadok, W., Schoppach, R., Ghanem, M. E., Zucca, C., & Sinclair, T. R. (2019). Crop Simulation Modeling Informed By Physiological Phenotyping Illuminate Context-Dependencies for Enhancing Wheat Drought Tolerance in Tunisia. 2019 ASA and CSSA Meeting, San antonio (Texas). https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/219152