Simulating the impact of extreme heat and frost events on wheat crop production: a review

By K. Barlow, B. Christy, Garry O'Leary, P. Riffkin, James Nuttall. 2015

478 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Extreme weather events (frost and heat shock), already a significant challenge for grain producers, are predicted to increase under future climate scenarios. This paper reviews the current knowledge on the impacts of extreme heat (heat shock) and frost on crop production and how these impacts are incorporated into contemporary process-based crop models. Heat shock and frost result in a range of physiological impacts on wheat. Based on the literature we conclude that the greatest impacts on production from frost are associated with sterility and the abortion of formed grains around anthesis. While the greatest yield impact from heat shock are reduced grain number (sterility and abortion of grains) during anthesis to early grain filling; as well as the reduced duration of grain filling. Crop models generally did not consider the non-linear response in grain yield from a heat shock or frost event due to these key physiological impacts. While frost damage was incorporated into a number of models through winterkill functions, seedling death or advanced senescence, only the STICS model incorporated a potential decrease in grain number around anthesis. In contrast, heat shock was rarely considered within crop models, with only two examples found in the literature; (1) APSIM-Nwheat which incorporated accelerated senescence in response to extreme heat and (2) MONICA which incorporated a reduction in grain number and yield. We propose a conceptual model for the change in grain number and therefore yield in response to both a frost and heat shock event. We discuss the potential use of daily maximum/minimum temperatures, canopy temperature and heat/frost loads for determining crop response in the models. As well as identifying the need for a greater understanding on how the duration of temperature extremes impact on yield, as well as the cumulative effects of multiple heat/frost events and the interactions with other abiotic stresses including drought.

Subfields: Agronomy and Crop Science, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d376f3454ea484c40549185df58274764d933453

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Citations in the corpus

Yield gap analysis of rainfed wheat demonstrates local to global relevance (2016, background): “However, APSIM has limited ability to simulate these spatially variable and infrequent events (Barlow et al. 2015), which were not included in the simulations used in the current study.”
Temperature extremes: Effect on plant growth and development (2015, background): “A recent review by Barlow et al. (2015) on the effect of temperature extremes, frost and heat, in wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) revealed that frost caused sterility and abortion of formed grains while excessive heat caused access article under the CC BY-NC tfield). reduction in grain number and…”
Impact of Climate Change on Crops Adaptation and Strategies to Tackle Its Outcome: A Review (2019, background): “As heat stress affects the grain production and yield, cold stress results in sterility, and drought stress negatively influences the morpho-physiology of plants [69,70].”
Adaptation of wheat, barley, canola, field pea and chickpea to the thermal environments of Australia (2015, background): “Our framework could thus be expanded to incorporate thermal effects on seed weight that are mediated by the responses of the rate and duration and of seed growth, which are in turn partially related to the response of the rate of leaf senescence (Barlow et al. 2015).”
Water and temperature stress define the optimal flowering period for wheat in south-eastern Australia (2017, background): “As highlighted in the recent review by Barlow et al. (2015), APSIM does not currently account for frost and heat events in its yield predictions.”
Recent changes in southern Australian frost occurrence: implications for wheat production risk (2016, background): “…frost and reduced crop production are well understood and have been extensively reported both internationally (Kalma et al. 1992; Davidson 1997; Porter and Gawith 1999; Woldendorp et al. 2008; Budong et al. 2010) and nationally (Frederiks et al. 2012; Christy et al. 2013; Barlow et al. 2015).”
Interactions between water and nitrogen in Australian cropping systems: physiological, agronomic, economic, breeding and modelling perspectives (2016, background): “These risks are not well simulated in models and decision-support systems (Barlow et al. 2015).”