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Daily mean soil water contents at 10 and 40 cm depth (n = 2 each) in (a, b) control and (c, d) drought subplots under different cropping systems (Conv. for conventional, Org. for organic) in 2019. Breaks in continuous lines indicate sensor malfunction. Shaded areas in (c) and (d) represent the drought treatment period from 25 April to 19 June 2019.
Source publication
Investigating plant responses to climate change is key to develop suitable adaptation strategies. However, whether changes in land management can alleviate increasing drought threats to crops in the future is still unclear.
We conducted a management × drought experiment with winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) to study plant water and vegetative tr...
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Citations
... The positive relationship in the dry year suggests that a faster growth is important to obtain higher maximum biomass and in turn higher yield during dry conditions, and the non-significant relationship during the year with normal weather conditions suggests that growth rate is not as critical for biomass accumulation during normal weather conditions. Using farm fields, earlier research has shown that leaf area Sun et al., 2024) and peak GLAI (Lambert et al., 2018, Yamamoto et al., 2023 can be related to crop yield. For the fields with yield data available in this study (six fields), together with additional 23 farm fields in the same region, there was a strong correlation between higher peak GLAI and higher winter wheat yield in 2021 shown in Sjulgård (2024). ...
Drought poses increasing challenges to global food production. Knowledge about the influence of drought on crop development and the role of soil properties for crop drought severity is important in drought risk analysis and for mitigating drought impacts at the landscape level. Here, we tested if satellite images from Sentinel-2 could be used to assess the impacts of drought on crop development and the influence of soil properties on crop drought responses at the landscape scale and what the responses were. As a case study, we assessed winter wheat growth on 13 fields belonging to commercial farmers in southern Sweden in a dry year (2018) and in a year with normal weather conditions (2021). To track crop growth, the green leaf area index (GLAI) was estimated from satellite imagery using a radiative transfer model. Proxies for winter wheat growth rate, peak GLAI, and the timing of peak GLAI were derived from the GLAI development at the single-field level. We then compared the crop growth proxies between the 2 years and related the year-to-year differences between fields to measured soil properties. We found lower estimated growth rates, lower peak GLAI, and earlier peak GLAI in the dry year compared to the year with normal weather conditions. A higher peak GLAI in the dry year was related to a higher growth rate, and this was not shown in the year with normal precipitation. Differences in crop development between years were large for some fields but small for other fields, suggesting that soil properties play a role in crop response to drought. We found that fields with a higher plant available water capacity had a higher growth rate in the dry year and smaller relative differences in growth rate between the 2 years. This shows the importance of soils in mitigating drought conditions, which will likely become more relevant in an increasingly drier climate. Our case study demonstrates that satellite-derived crop growth proxies can identify crop responses to drought events and that satellite imagery can be used to discover impacts of soil properties on crop development at scales relevant to commercial farming.
... For example, evidence suggests that the frequency of multi-year droughts is expected to increase dramatically over this century due to prolonged periods of low or no rainfall combined with warmer temperatures, leading to higher evaporation, reduced surface water, and the drying out of soils and vegetation (Anderson et al., 2016;Eziz et al., 2017;Zhao et al., 2020). Moreover, it has been found that climatic and soil conditions experienced in previous years may play a key role in regulating the progressive impacts of drought on plant traits (Batbaatar et al., 2021;Reinelt et al., 2023;Sun et al., 2024). As a result, plants may respond differently to multi-year droughts compared to single, non-consecutive drought years (Batbaatar et al., 2021). ...
Abstract
Background and Aims
Climate change is causing increasing temperatures and drought, creating new environmental conditions, which species must cope with. Plant species can respond to these shifting environments by escaping to more favorable environments, undergoing adaptive evolution, or exhibiting phenotypic plasticity. In this study, we investigate genotype responses to variation in environmental conditions (genotype-by-environment interactions; G × E) over multiple years to gain insights into the plasticity and potential adaptive responses of plants to environmental changes in the face of climate change.
Methods
We reciprocally transplanted 16 European genotypes of Fragaria vesca (Rosaceae), the woodland strawberry, between four sites along a latitudinal gradient from 40°N (Spain) to 70°N (northern Finland). We examined G × E interactions in plant performance traits (fruit and stolon production and rosette size) under ambient weather conditions and a reduced precipitation treatment (as a proxy for drought), at these sites over two years.
Key Results
Our findings reveal signals of local adaptation for fruit production at the latitudinal extremes of F. vesca distribution. No clear signals of local adaptation for stolon production were detected. Genotypes from higher European latitudes were generally smaller than genotypes from lower latitudes across almost all sites, years and both treatments, indicating a strong genetic control of plant size in these genotypes. We found mixed responses to reduced precipitation: while several genotypes exhibited poorer performance under the reduced precipitation treatment across most sites and years, with the effect being most pronounced at the driest site, other genotypes responded to reduced precipitation by increasing fruit and/or stolon production and/or growing larger across most sites and years, particularly at the wettest site.
Conclusions
This study provides insights into the influence of different environments on plant performance at a continental scale. While woodland strawberry seems locally adapted in more extreme environments, reduced precipitation results in winners and losers among its genotypes. This may ultimately reduce genetic variation in the face of increasing drought frequency and severity, with implications for the species’ capacity to adapt.
... All indicator tests were repeated three times. Relative chlorophyll content (SPAD) was measured by SPAD-502 chlorophyll meter (Konica Minolta, Osaka, Japan) [82]. The average value of four data collected in a tree was treated as a sample datum, and ten trees were randomly selected and recorded in each group. ...
Drought is a critical factor constraining plant growth in arid regions. However, the performance and adaptive mechanism of Atriplex canescens (A. canescens) under drought stress remain unclear. Hence, a three-year experiment with three drought gradients was performed in a common garden, and the leaf functional traits, biomass and biomass partitioning patterns of A. canescens were investigated. The results showed that drought stress had significant effects on A. canescens leaf functional traits. A. canescens maintained the content of malondialdehyde (MDA) and the activity of superoxide dismutase (SOD), but the peroxidase (POD) and catalase (CAT) activity decreased, and the content of proline (Pro) and soluble sugar (SS) increased only under heavy drought stress. Under drought stress, the leaves became smaller but denser, the specific leaf area (SLA) decreased, but the dry matter content (LDMC) maintained stability. Total biomass decreased 60% to 1758 g under heavy drought stress and the seed and leaf biomass was only 10% and 20% of non-stress group, but there had no significant difference on root biomass. More biomass was allocated to root under drought stress. The root biomass allocation ratio was doubled from 9.62% to 19.81% under heavy drought, and the root/shoot ratio (R/S) increased from 0.11 to 0.25. The MDA was significantly and negatively correlated with biomass, while the SPAD was significantly and positively correlated with total and aboveground organs biomass. The POD, CAT, Pro and SS had significant correlations with root and seed allocation ratio. The leaf morphological traits related to leaf shape and weight had significant correlations with total and aboveground biomass and biomass allocation. Our study demonstrated that under drought stress, A. canescens made tradeoffs between growth potential and drought tolerance and evolved with a conservative strategy. These findings provide more information for an in-depth understanding of the adaption strategies of A. canescens to drought stress and provide potential guidance for planting and sustainable management of A. canescens in arid and semi-arid regions.
... This suggests that soil moisture would not be so easily lost under drought events or heatwaves, when evapotranspirative demand is increased (Dai et al., 2018), which could improve the system's resilience to drought under conservation tillage practices and organic management (García-Tejero et al., 2020). However, drought reduced yields of three crops grown in the four cropping systems in the FAST experiment (Wittwer et al., 2023;Sun et al., 2024), suggesting a limited capability of organic farming and conservation tillage to enhance agroecosystem resilience to severe drought, at least in the context of this experiment (i.e., without cover crops and full nitrogen fertilization). Moreover, system resilience will also depend on the crop grown and if soil water is indeed available to plant roots. ...
Soil structure is important for plant growth and ecosystem functioning, and provides habitat for a wide range of soil biota. So far, very few studies directly compared the effects of three main farming practices (conventional, organic and conservation agriculture) on soil structure and soil physical properties. Here, we collected undisturbed soil cores from the FArming System and Tillage long-term field experiment (FAST) near Zurich (Switzerland). This trial compares the effects of conventional tillage, conventional no-tillage, organic tillage and non-inversion reduced tillage under organic farming since 2009. We assessed 28 soil chemical and physical properties and related them to root and microbial biomass as well as to the diversity of bacteria and fungi. Tillage decreased bulk density (− 14 %) and penetration resistance (− 40 %) compared to no/reduce-tillage, potentially promoting a facilitative environment for plant root growth. Water holding capacity varied among systems, being the lowest in conventional tillage and highest (+10 %) in organic reduced tillage. We observed that microbial biomass and rhizosphere microbial diversity was positively associated with water holding capacity and the occurrence of mesopores. The presence of mesopores could provide additional niche space for microbes possibly explaining its positive effect on microbial diversity. Soil microbial biomass and rhizosphere microbial diversity were higher in plots subjected to soil conservation practices, indicating that tillage has a detrimental effect on soil microbes. Our work demonstrates that organic, conventional and conservation agriculture create contrasting soil physical environments. This work highlights the trade-off between creating a facilitative environment for root growth by tillage and maintaining complex and diverse soil microhabitats for microbes under conservation agriculture.
... This suggests that soil moisture would not be so easily lost under drought events or heatwaves, when evapotranspirative demand is increased (Dai et al., 2018), which could improve the system's resilience to drought under conservation tillage practices and organic management (García-Tejero et al., 2020). However, drought reduced yields of three crops grown in the four cropping systems in the FAST experiment (Wittwer et al., 2023;Sun et al., 2024), suggesting a limited capability of organic farming and conservation tillage to enhance agroecosystem resilience to severe drought, at least in the context of this experiment (i.e., without cover crops and full nitrogen fertilization). Moreover, system resilience will also depend on the crop grown and if soil water is indeed available to plant roots. ...
