Evidence for increasing global wheat yield potential

Jose Rafael Guarin (1, 2) , Pierre Martre (3) , Frank Ewert (4, 5) , Heidi Webber (4, 5) , Sibylle Dueri (3) , Daniel Calderini (6) , Matthew Reynolds (7) , Gemma Molero (8) , Daniel Miralles (9, 10) , Guillermo Garcia (9, 10) , Gustavo Slafer (11, 12) , Francesco Giunta (13) , Diego N L Pequeno (7) , Tommaso Stella (4, 5) , Mukhtar Ahmed (14, 15) , Phillip D Alderman (16) , Bruno Basso (17) , Andres G Berger (18) , Marco Bindi (19) , Gennady Bracho-Mujica (20) , Davide Cammarano (21) , Yi Chen (22) , Benjamin Dumont (23) , Ehsan Eyshi Rezaei (4) , Elias Fereres (24, 25) , Roberto Ferrise (19) , Thomas Gaiser (5) , Yujing Gao (1) , Margarita Garcia-Vila (24, 25) , Sebastian Gayler (26) , Zvi Hochman (27) , Gerrit Hoogenboom (1) , Leslie A Hunt (28) , Kurt C Kersebaum (4, 20, 29) , Claas Nendel (4, 29, 30) , Jørgen E Olesen (31) , Taru Palosuo (32) , Eckart Priesack (33) , Johannes W M Pullens (31) , Alfredo Rodríguez (34, 35) , Reimund P Rötter (20, 36) , Margarita Ruiz Ramos (35) , Mikhail A Semenov (37) , Nimai Senapati (37) , Stefan Siebert (20) , Amit Kumar Srivastava (5) , Claudio Stöckle (38) , Iwan Supit (39) , Fulu Tao (22, 32) , Peter Thorburn (27) , Enli Wang (27) , Tobias Karl David Weber (26, 40) , Liujun Xiao (41, 42) , Zhao Zhang (43) , Chuang Zhao (44) , Jin Zhao (45, 31) , Zhigan Zhao (27, 45) , Yan Zhu (42) , Senthold Asseng (46)

1 UF - University of Florida [Gainesville]
2 CCSR - Center for Climate Systems Research [New York]
3 LEPSE - Écophysiologie des Plantes sous Stress environnementaux
4 ZALF - Leibniz-Zentrum für Agrarlandschaftsforschung = Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research
5 INRES - Institute of Crop Science and Resource Conservation [Bonn]
6 Universidad Austral de Chile
7 CIMMYT - International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center
8 KWS Momont SAS
9 Universitad de Buenos Aires = University of Buenos Aires [Argentina]
10 IFEVA - Instituto de Investigaciones Fisiologicas y Ecologicas Vinculadas a la Agricultura
11 Universitat de Lleida
12 ICREA - Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats
13 UNISS - Università degli Studi di Sassari = University of Sassari [Sassari]
14 AAUR - Pir Mehr Ali Shah Arid Agriculture University = PMAS-Arid Agriculture University Rawalpindi
15 SLU - Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
16 OSU - Oklahoma State University [Stillwater]
17 Michigan State University [East Lansing]
18 INIA - Instituto Nacional de Investigación Agropecuaria
19 DAGRI - Department of Agriculture, Food, Environment and Forestry
20 Georg-August-University = Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
21 Purdue University [West Lafayette]
22 IGSNRR - Institute of geographical sciences and natural resources research [CAS]
23 Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech [Gembloux]
24 IAS CSIC - Instituto de Agricultura Sostenible - Institute for Sustainable Agriculture
25 Universidad de Córdoba = University of Córdoba [Córdoba]
26 University of Hohenheim
27 CSIRO - Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation [Canberra]
28 University of Guelph
29 CzechGlobe - Global Change Research Centre
30 University of Potsdam = Universität Potsdam
31 Aarhus University [Aarhus]
32 LUKE - Natural Resources Institute Finland
33 Helmholtz Zentrum München = German Research Center for Environmental Health
34 UCLM - Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha = University of Castilla-La Mancha
35 CEIGRAM - Centro de Estudios e Investigación para la Gestión de Riesgos Agrarios y Medioambientales
36 CBL - Centre for Biodiversity and Sustainable Land-use [University of Göttingen]
37 Rothamsted Research
38 WSU - Washington State University
39 WUR - Wageningen University and Research [Wageningen]
40 Universität Kassel [Kassel]
41 Zhejiang University
42 NAU - Nanjing Agricultural University
43 BIRD - Building artificial Intelligence between trust, Responsibility and Decision
44 BNU - Beijing Normal University
45 CAU - China Agricultural University
46 TUM - Technische Universität Munchen - Université Technique de Munich [Munich, Allemagne]

Abstract Wheat is the most widely grown food crop, with 761 Mt produced globally in 2020. To meet the expected grain demand by mid-century, wheat breeding strategies must continue to improve upon yield-advancing physiological traits, regardless of climate change impacts. Here, the best performing doubled haploid (DH) crosses with an increased canopy photosynthesis from wheat field experiments in the literature were extrapolated to the global scale with a multi-model ensemble of process-based wheat crop models to estimate global wheat production. The DH field experiments were also used to determine a quantitative relationship between wheat production and solar radiation to estimate genetic yield potential. The multi-model ensemble projected a global annual wheat production of 1050 ± 145 Mt due to the improved canopy photosynthesis, a 37% increase, without expanding cropping area. Achieving this genetic yield potential would meet the lower estimate of the projected grain demand in 2050, albeit with considerable challenges.

Keywords: yield increase; radiation use efficiency; wheat potential yield; crop model ensemble; global food security

Domains: Life Sciences [q-bio]; Vegetal Biology

Jose Rafael Guarin, Pierre Martre, Frank Ewert, Heidi Webber, Sibylle Dueri, et al.. Evidence for increasing global wheat yield potential. Environmental Research Letters, 2022, 17 (12), pp.124045. ⟨10.1088/1748-9326/aca77c⟩. ⟨hal-03946522⟩