Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T21:40:05.612Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Trait-based responses of seven annual crops to elevated CO2 and water limitation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2018

Devan Allen McGranahan  and
Brittany N. Poling
Devan Allen McGranahan*
Affiliation:
School for Natural Resource Sciences, North Dakota State University, Fargo, North Dakota, USA
Brittany N. Poling
Affiliation:
School for Natural Resource Sciences, North Dakota State University, Fargo, North Dakota, USA
*
Author for correspondence: Devan Allen McGranahan, E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

By potentially disrupting crop production, climate change has been implicated as a threat to global food security. We focus on two elements of climate change: elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, or e[CO2], and reduced water availability, as caused by drought. Both variables have been shown to have effects on crop physiology, although there is considerable evidence of interactions and moderation by species-specific differences. Measuring traits helps scale environmental effects up to functional responses, and we focused on traits connected to photosynthesis, which has a close association with crop yield. We measured the response of four physiological traits—quantum photosynthetic yield, chlorophyll content, root:shoot ratio and leaf area—across a diverse set of seven annual crop species grown under three levels of e[CO2] (450, 575 and 700 ppm) and two levels of water availability (minimum ~45 and ~15% VWC) in a growth chamber. Species included barley, durum wheat, maize, oats, sorghum, pinto bean and sunflower. Our regression analysis focused on testing for interactions between e[CO2] and water limitation and determining relative effect sizes of climate change impacts across species, data that can be used for species-specific modeling or determining appropriate levels of environmental variables in free-air CO2 enrichment studies designed to extend small-scale experimental results to the field. Across all species and all traits, the strongest effect of e[CO2] occurred from 450 to 575 ppm, with only marginal differences from 575 to 700 ppm. We found substantial declines in leaf area across all species as a result of e[CO2] and wide variability in leaf area responses to water limitation. Other traits showed weak and variable responses to both e[CO2] and water limitation. While our data confirm that elements of global change, especially increased atmospheric CO2 concentration, do affect traits related to photosynthesis, we found no discernible pattern to suggest which crops might be more resistant to e[CO2].

Keywords

Atmospheric carbon fertilizationclimate change impacts on crop productionfood securityglobal environmental change
Type
Research Paper
Information
Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems , Volume 33 , Special Issue 3: Themed Content: Ag/Food Systems and Climate Change , June 2018 , pp. 259 - 266
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ainsworth, EA and Long, SP (2004) What have we learned from 15 years of free-air CO2 enrichment (FACE)? A meta-analytic review of the responses of photosynthesis, canopy properties and plant production to rising CO2: Tansley review. New Phytologist 165(2), 351–372.Google Scholar
Anyia, A (2004) Water-use efficiency, leaf area and leaf gas exchange of cowpeas under mid-season drought. European Journal of Agronomy 20(4), 327–339.Google Scholar
Blum, A (1996) Crop responses to drought and the interpretation of adaptation. Plant Growth Regulation 20(2), 135–148.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blum, A and Arkin, GF (1984) Sorghum root growth and water-use as affected by water supply and growth duration. Field Crops Research 9, 131–142.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bond, WJ and Midgley, GF (2000) A proposed CO2-controlled mechanism of woody plant invasion in grasslands and savannas. Global Change Biology 6(8), 865–869.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burnham, KP and Anderson, DR (2002) Model Selection and Multimodel Inference: A Practical Information-Theoretic Approach. New York: Springer Science+Business Media, Inc.Google Scholar
Cottingham, KL, Lennon, JT and Brown, BL (2005) Knowing when to draw the line: designing more informative ecological experiments. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 3(3), 145–152.Google Scholar
Cribari-Neto, F and Zeileis, A (2010) Beta regression in R. Journal of Statistical Software 34(2), 1–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deryng, D, Conway, D, Ramankutty, N, Price, J and Warren, R (2014) Global crop yield response to extreme heat stress under multiple climate change futures. Environmental Research Letters 9(3), 034011.Google Scholar
Edwards, EJ, Osborne, CP, Stromberg, CAE, Smith, SA, C4 Grasses Consortium, Bond, WJ, Christin, PA, Cousins, AB, Duvall, MR, Fox, DL, Freckleton, RP, Ghannoum, O, Hartwell, J, Huang, Y, Janis, CM, Keeley, JE, Kellogg, EA, Knapp, AK, Leakey, ADB, Nelson, DM, Saarela, JM, Sage, RF, Sala, OE, Salamin, N, Still, CJ and Tipple, B (2010) The origins of C4 grasslands: integrating evolutionary and ecosystem science. Science 328(5978), 587–591.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Faralli, M, Grove, IG, Hare, MC, Kettlewell, PS and Fiorani, F (2017) Rising CO2 from historical concentrations enhances the physiological performance of Brassica napus seedlings under optimal water supply but not under reduced water availability. Plant, Cell and Environment 40(2), 317–325.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferris, R, Sabatti, M, Miglietta, F, Mills, R and Taylor, G (2001) Leaf area is stimulated in Populus by free air CO2 enrichment (POPFACE), through increased cell expansion and production. Plant, Cell and Environment 24(3), 305–315.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fischer, RA, Rees, D, Sayre, KD, Lu, Z-M, Condon, AG and Saavedra, AL (1998) Wheat yield progress associated with higher stomatal conductance and photosynthetic rate, and cooler canopies. Crop Science 38(6), 1467–1475.Google Scholar
Fitzgerald, GJ, Tausz, M, O'leary, G, Mollah, MR, Tausz-Posch, S, Seneweera, S, Mock, I, Löw, M, Partington, DL and McNeil, D (2016) Elevated atmospheric [CO2] can dramatically increase wheat yields in semi-arid environments and buffer against heat waves. Global Change Biology 22(6), 2269–2284.Google Scholar
Gray, SB, Dermody, O, Klein, SP, Locke, AM, McGrath, JM, Paul, RE, Rosenthal, DM, Ruiz-Vera, UM, Siebers, MH and Strellner, R (2016) Intensifying drought eliminates the expected benefits of elevated carbon dioxide for soybean. Nature Plants 2, 16132.Google Scholar
Gregory, PJ, Ingram, JSI and Brklacich, M (2005) Climate change and food security. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 360(1463), 2139–2148.Google Scholar
Grimm, V and Wissel, C (1997) Babel, or the ecological stability discussions: an inventory and analysis of terminology and a guide for avoiding confusion. Oecologia 109(3), 323–334.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hager, HA, Ryan, GD, Kovacs, HM and Newman, JA (2016) Effects of elevated CO2 on photosynthetic traits of native and invasive C3 and C4 grasses. BMC Ecology 16, 28.Google Scholar
Hatfield, JL, Boote, KJ, Kimball, BA, Ziska, LH, Izaurralde, RC, Ort, D, Thomson, AM and Wolfe, D (2011) Climate impacts on agriculture: implications for crop production. Agronomy Journal 103(2), 351–370.Google Scholar
IPCC (2013) Annex II: climate system scenario tables. In Prather, M, Flato, G, Friedlingstein, P, Jones, C, Lamarque, J-F, Liao, H and Rasch, P (eds). Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Johnston, CA (2014) Agricultural expansion: land use shell game in the U.S. Northern Plains. Landscape Ecology 29(1), 81–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kawamitsu, Y, Driscoll, T and Boyer, JS (2000) Photosynthesis during desiccation in an intertidal alga and a land plant. Plant and Cell Physiology 41(3), 344–353.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kgope, BS, Bond, WJ and Midgley, GF (2009) Growth responses of African savanna trees implicate atmospheric [CO2] as a driver of past and current changes in savanna tree cover. Austral Ecology 35(4), 451–463.Google Scholar
Liu, F and Stützel, H (2004) Biomass partitioning, specific leaf area, and water use efficiency of vegetable amaranth (Amaranthus spp.) in response to drought stress. Scientia Horticulturae 102(1), 15–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lloyd, J and Farquhar, GD (1996) The CO2 dependence of photosynthesis, plant growth responses to elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations and their interaction with soil nutrient status. I. General principles and forest ecosystems. Functional Ecology 10(1), 4–32.Google Scholar
Lobell, DB and Asseng, S (2017) Comparing estimates of climate change impacts from process-based and statistical crop models. Environmental Research Letters 12(1), 015001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lobell, DB and Gourdji, SM (2012) The influence of climate change on global crop productivity. Plant Physiology 160(4), 1686–1697.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lobell, DB, Roberts, MJ, Schlenker, W, Braun, N, Little, BB, Rejesus, RM and Hammer, GL (2014) Greater sensitivity to drought accompanies maize yield increase in the US Midwest. Science 344(6183), 516–519.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Long, SP, Ainsworth, EA, Rogers, A and Ort, DR (2004) Rising atmospheric carbon dioxide: plants FACE the future. Annual Review of Plant Biology 55(1), 591–628.Google Scholar
Mafakheri, A, Siosemardeh, A, Bahramnejad, B, Struik, PC and Sohrabi, Y (2010) Effect of drought stress on yield, proline and chlorophyll contents in three chickpea cultivars. Australian Journal of Crop Science 4(8), 580–585.Google Scholar
Mazerolle, M (2015) AICcmodavg: model selection and multimodel inference based on (Q)AIC(c), R package version 2.0-3.Google Scholar
McGranahan, DA and Yurkonis, KA (2018) Variability in grass forage quality and quantity in response to elevated CO2 and water limitation. Grass and Forage Science in press. doi: 10.1111/gfs.12338.Google Scholar
Mehta, H and Sarkar, KR (1992) Heterosis for leaf photosynthesis, grain yield and yield components in maize. Euphytica 61(2), 161–168.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Monteith, JL and Moss, C (1977) Climate and the efficiency of crop production in Britain. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 281(980), 277–294.Google Scholar
Nakagawa, S and Cuthill, IC (2007) Effect size, confidence interval and statistical significance: a practical guide for biologists. Biological Reviews 82(4), 591–605.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nyachiro, JM, Briggs, KG, Hoddinott, J and Johnson-Flanagan, AM (2001) Chlorophyll content, chlorophyll fluorescence and water deficit in spring wheat. Cereal Research Communications 29(1/2), 135–142.Google Scholar
Osborne, CP (2016) Crop yields: CO2 fertilization dries up. Nature Plants 2, 16138.Google Scholar
Osborne, CP and Sack, L (2012) Evolution of C4 plants: a new hypothesis for an interaction of CO2 and water relations mediated by plant hydraulics. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 367(1588), 583–600.Google Scholar
Padbury, G, Waltman, S, Caprio, J, Coen, G, McGinn, S, Mortensen, D, Nielsen, G and Sinclair, R (2002) Agroecosystems and land resources of the northern Great Plains. Agronomy Journal 94(2), 251–261.Google Scholar
R Core Team (2016) R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing.Google Scholar
Rinella, MJ and James, JJ (2010) Invasive plant researchers should calculate effect sizes, not P-values. Invasive Plant Science and Management 3(2), 106–112.Google Scholar
Ruiz-Vera, UM, Siebers, MH, Drag, DW, Ort, DR and Bernacchi, CJ (2015) Canopy warming caused photosynthetic acclimation and reduced seed yield in maize grown at ambient and elevated [CO2]. Global Change Biology 21(11), 4237–4249.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sala, OE, Parton, WJ, Joyce, LA and Lauenroth, WK (1988) Primary production of the central grassland region of the United States. Ecology 69(1), 40–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, MD (2011) An ecological perspective on extreme climatic events: a synthetic definition and framework to guide future research: defining extreme climate events. Journal of Ecology 99(3), 656–663.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sorenson, LG, Goldberg, R, Root, TL and Anderson, MG (1998) Potential effects of global warming on waterfowl populations breeding in the northern Great Plains. Climatic Change 40(2), 343–369.Google Scholar
Suding, KN, Lavorel, S, Chapin, FS, Cornelissen, JHC, Díaz, S, Garnier, E, Goldberg, D, Hooper, DU, Jackson, ST and Navas, M-L (2008) Scaling environmental change through the community-level: a trait-based response-and-effect framework for plants. Global Change Biology 14(5), 1125–1140.Google Scholar
Symonds, MRE and Moussalli, A (2011) A brief guide to model selection, multimodel inference and model averaging in behavioural ecology using Akaike's information criterion. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 65(1), 13–21.Google Scholar
Temme, AA, Liu, JC, Cornwell, WK, Cornelissen, JHC and Aerts, R (2015) Winners always win: growth of a wide range of plant species from low to future high CO2. Ecology and Evolution 5(21), 4949–4961.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tubiello, FN and Ewert, F (2002) Simulating the effects of elevated CO2 on crops: approaches and applications for climate change. European Journal of Agronomy 18(1), 57–74.Google Scholar
Vanaja, M, Maheswari, M, Sathish, P, Vagheera, P, Jyothi Lakshmi, N, Vijay Kumar, G, Yadav, SK, Razzaq, A, Singh, J and Sarkar, B (2015) Genotypic variability in physiological, biomass and yield response to drought stress in pigeonpea. Physiology and Molecular Biology of Plants 21(4), 541–549.Google Scholar
VanderWeele, TJ and Knol, MJ (2014) A tutorial on interaction. Epidemiologic Methods 3(1), 33–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wall, GW (2001) Elevated atmospheric CO2 alleviates drought stress in wheat. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 87(3), 261–271.Google Scholar
Wand, SJE, Midgley, GF, Jones, MH and Curtis, PS (1999) Responses of wild C4 and C3 grass (Poaceae) species to elevated atmospheric CO2 concentration: a meta-analytic test of current theories and perceptions. Global Change Biology 5(6), 723–741.Google Scholar
Wilcox, J and Makowski, D (2014) A meta-analysis of the predicted effects of climate change on wheat yields using simulation studies. Field Crops Research 156, 180–190.Google Scholar
Wright, CK and Wimberly, MC (2013) Recent land use change in the Western Corn Belt threatens grasslands and wetlands. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110(10), 4134–4139.Google Scholar
Zelitch, I (1982) The close relationship between net photosynthesis and crop yield. BioScience 32(10), 796–802.Google Scholar
Ziska, LH and Bunce, JA (1997) Influence of increasing carbon dioxide concentration on the photosynthetic and growth stimulation of selected C4 crops and weeds. Photosynthesis Research 54(3), 199–208.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: File

McGranahan and Poling supplementary material

McGranahan and Poling supplementary material 1

Download McGranahan and Poling supplementary material(File)
File 333 KB