Wheat and rice may be bred to need less water and fertilizer
Ochieng GA, Gujer L, Christopher S, Mason AS, Ballvora A
Crop Improvement
The corn and wheat fields you drive past could someday need far less irrigation and fertilizer, cutting runoff into local streams while still feeding more people during droughts.
Plants need both water and nitrogen to grow, and it turns out the internal systems they use to manage each one are tangled together. This review pulls together what scientists know about the genes and root and leaf traits that control both, so breeders can design cereal crops that thrive with less water and less fertilizer at the same time.
Key Findings
Nitrogen use efficiency and water use efficiency in cereals rely on interconnected physiological and molecular pathways, meaning breeding for one trait often influences the other.
Comparing key genes across major cereal crops reveals shared mechanisms plants use to balance nitrogen and water acquisition under combined stress.
The authors propose a conceptual framework, including a cross-tolerance network model, integrating root/shoot morphology, molecular biology, and physiology to guide breeding of resilient cultivars.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Scientists reviewed how cereal crops like wheat, rice, and corn manage nitrogen and water together, since improving one often affects the other, and propose a breeding roadmap to make crops resilient to both drought and low-fertilizer conditions.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Breeding for Resilient Cereals: Integrating Molecular Networks and Trait-Based Selection to Improve Nitrogen and Water Use Efficiencies.
Cereal crops are fundamental to global food security, but their production is increasingly challenged by rising demand and the unpredictable impacts of climate change. Among the most limiting and i...
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