Daniel Calderini

• Dr.
• Professor at Universidad Austral de Chile

Context Global climate change is driving the temperature increase, which often reduces crop production. Most of the temperature increase studies in rapeseed have been conducted under controlled conditions, limiting their results to true field conditions. Objective This study aimed to assess the sensitivity of rapeseed to temperature increase during...

Red raspberries are valued for their color, flavor, and health-promoting organic compounds, which may be affected by increased temperatures due to climate change. This work aimed to provide new information on the response of raspberry cv. “Heritage” to thermal increase and its impact on fruit quality and perceived flavor. The study was conducted du...

Increasing global food demand will require more food production¹ without further exceeding the planetary boundaries² while simultaneously adapting to climate change³. We used an ensemble of wheat simulation models with improved sink and source traits from the highest-yielding wheat genotypes⁴ to quantify potential yield gains and associated nitroge...

Enhancing grain yield is a primary goal in the cultivation of major staple crops, including wheat. Recent research has focused on identifying the physiological and molecular factors that influence grain weight, a critical determinant of crop yield. However, a bottleneck has arisen due to the trade-off between grain weight and grain number, whose un...

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 photosy...

Global climate change is driving the temperature increase, which negatively impacts on crop production. Most heat stress studies in rapeseed have been conducted under controlled conditions, limiting their results to true field crops. This study aimed to assess the sensitivity of rapeseed to temperature increase during two phases of the grain fillin...

Climate change is palpable. Achiving carbon net-zero is urgent. Agriculture could move to higher latitudes. As temperatures increase, it is difficult to satisfy vernalization requirements. High day and night temperatures in reproductive stages affect seed yield. Rapeseed has attributes of vegetative and reproductive plasticity to face climate chang...

Enhancing grain yield is a primary goal in the cultivation of major staple crops, including wheat. Recent research has focused on identifying the physiological and molecular factors that influence grain weight, a critical determinant of crop yield. However, a bottleneck has arisen due to the trade-off between grain weight and grain number, whose un...

Context or problem: Despite its global significance as a highly nutritious food, the critical period for grain yield and grain protein determination of quinoa has not yet been identified. Objective or research question: This study aimed to determine the critical period of grain number, yield, and grain protein of quinoa in contrasting environments...

The probability of occurrence of high temperatures and cloudiness events increases during the post-flowering period of temperate crops in the southern cone of South America. Several studies have evaluated the effect of high temperature or shading on wheat and rapeseed, but little is known about the impact of the combined effect of both stresses on...

Climate-change-induced temperature fluctuations pose a significant threat to crop production, particularly in the Southern Hemisphere. This study investigates the transcriptome and physiological responses of rapeseed to post-flowering temperature increases, providing valuable insights into the molecular mechanisms underlying rapeseed tolerance to h...

Insights for facing climate change taking advantage on canola plasticity

Combined effects of heat stress and shading on canola, with complete compensation between grain number and grain weight in a high-yielding environment.

Previous studies showed that source-sink reduction during early grain filling of rapeseed negatively affects grain number and in turn, grain yield. However, yield and oil concentration response to both source increase and reduction after flowering has been scarcely reported. To accomplish the future growing demand is essential to answer if grain yi...

In the last years, climate change has increased mean temperature and reduced solar radiation in southern Chile. However, little is known about the sensitivity of grain yield, its components and quality traits to heat stress (HS) and source-sink (S-S) reduction at flowering and during grain filling. The objective of this study was to evaluate the ke...

The source-sink (S-S) ratio is a key trait in rapeseed (Brassica napus L.) after flowering due to its indeterminate growth habit. Flowers and siliques develop simultaneously competing for assimilates, directly affecting aboveground biomass allocation. This study attempts to understand the rapeseed biomass partitioning by increasing and reducing the...

It has been shown that the combined use of cytokinins (CK) and brassinosteroids (BR) applied during flowering increases grain number in Arabidopsis thaliana L. due to a synergistic effect between both phytohormones. These results could be emulated in a specie of the same Brassicaceae family. The objective of this study was to evaluate this effect o...

Increasing genetic wheat yield potential is considered as critical to increasing global wheat yields and production, baring major changes in consumption patterns. Climate change challenges breeding by making target environments less predictable, altering regional productivity and potentially increasing yield variability. Here we used a crop simulat...

Climate change-induced temperature fluctuations pose a significant threat to crop production, particularly in the Southern Hemisphere. This study investigates the transcriptome and physiological responses of rapeseed to post-flowering temperature increases, providing valuable insights into the molecular mechanisms underlying rapeseed tolerance to h...

This research elucidates the dynamic expression of expansin genes during the wheat grain (Triticum aestivum L.) development process using comprehensive meta-analysis and experimental validation. We leveraged RNA-seq data from multiple public databases, applying stringent criteria for selection, and identified 60,852 differentially expressed genes a...

Grain production must increase by 60% in the next four decades to keep up with the expected population growth and food demand. A significant part of this increase must come from the improvement of staple crop grain yield potential. Crop growth simulation models combined with field experiments and crop physiology are powerful tools to quantify the i...

Increasing global food demand will require more food production without further exceeding the planetary boundaries, while at the same time adapting to climate change. We used an ensemble of wheat simulation models, with sink-source improved traits from the highest-yielding wheat genotypes to quantify potential yield gains and associated N requireme...

Context Wheat (Triticum aestivum) has a high capacity to compensate grain yield (GY) at lower seed rates than those commonly assumed, especially in high-yield-potential environments. Objective Our study aimed at assessing: (i) the response of GY, biomass and harvest index of wheat under two contrasting seed rates; (ii) trade-offs among yield compo...

Rapeseed (Brassica napus L.) is the third worldwide oilseed crop after palm and soybean. Different authors have reported that high temperature or low radiation events during flowering and early seed filling affect seed yield and quality (seed oil and protein concentration). These findings expose the effect of both type of stress in independently re...

The properties of individual grain weight, protein concentration and protein composition contribute to grain quality of wheat. They are known to be affected by genetics, environment and crop management. This paper reports these properties in two dryland field experiments comparing cultivars with similar yield but with contrasting grain weight and n...

In a changing climate, extreme weather events such as heatwaves will be more frequent and could affect grain weight and the quality of crops such as wheat, one of the most significant crops in terms of global food security. In this work, we characterized the response of Triticum turgidum L. spp. durum wheat to short-term heat stress (HS) treatment...

In a changing climate, extreme weather events such as heat waves will be more frequent and could affect grain weight and the quality of crops such as wheat, one of the most significant crops in terms of global food security. In this work, we characterized the response of Triticum turgidum spp. durum wheat to a short-term heat-stress (HS) treatment...

Lentil is a cool season grain legume produced primarily in the Mediterranean and temperate regions of the world where water and heat stress in critical developmental windows constrain yield. The effect of stress on yield depends on the timing, intensity and duration of stress; here we focus on timing relative to phenological development. To determi...

Episodes of heat stress constrain crop production and will be aggravated in the near future according to short and medium-term climate scenarios. Global increase in cloudiness has also been observed, decreasing the incident solar radiation. This work was aimed to quantify the probability of occurrence of heat stress and cloudiness, alone or combine...

A critical barrier to improving crop yield is the trade-off between seed weight (SW) and seed number (SN), which has been commonly reported in several crops, including Brassica napus. Despite the agronomic relevance of this issue, the molecular factors involved in the interaction between SW and SN are largely unknown in crops. In this work, we perf...

Episodes of heat stress constrain crop production and will be aggravated in the near future according to short and medium-term climate scenarios. Global increase in cloudiness has also been observed, decreasing the incident solar radiation. This work was aimed to quantify the probability of occurrence of heat stress and cloudiness, alone or combine...

Crop Physiology: Case Histories of Major Crops updates the physiology of broad-acre crops with a focus on the genetic, environmental and management drivers of development, capture and efficiency in the use of radiation, water and nutrients, the formation of yield and aspects of quality. These physiological process are presented in a double context...

Wheat is a pillar for food security, which is grown across environments, and provides ~ 20% of calories and proteins to human nutrition. Grains are mainly composed of carbohydrates (70%–80%) and proteins (8%–22%). A wide variability in developmental and growth processes in responses to genetic, environmental, and management factors has been reporte...

Wheat is the most widely grown crop globally, providing 20% of all human calories and protein. Achieving step changes in genetic yield potential is crucial to ensure food security, but efforts are thwarted by an apparent trade‐off between grain size and number. Expansins are proteins that play important roles in plant growth by enhancing stress rel...

Understanding the response of plant nitrogen (N) and carbon (C) economies in oilseed rape, as well as their role in defining phenotypic plasticity, is necessary for designing new strategies to optimize plant and canopy C assimilation to improve potential yield. This paper aims to elucidate the extent to which the interaction between N supply and pl...

Silicon (Si) exerts beneficial effects in mitigating aluminum (Al) toxicity in different plant species. These include attenuating oxidative damage and improving structural strengthening as a result of the increased production of secondary metabolites such as phenols. The aim of this research was to evaluate the effect of Si on phenol production and...

Background and aims: The pericarp weight comprises less than 17 % of wheat grain weight at harvest. The pericarp supports the hydration and nutrition of both the embryo and endosperm, during early grain filling. However, studies of the pericarp and its association with final grain weight have been scarce. This research studied the growth dynamics...

Breeding heavier seeds while maintaining seed number has been proposed as an effective strategy to improve oil crop production. Recent studies assessing rapeseed source-sink (S-Sratio) reduction after flowering suggest a window in the early seed-filling period that can compensate, either partially or totally, for a decrease in the number of seeds....

Campo Sureño N°1,794 p 6-7.

El Mercurio Campo. 17 de diciembre 2019.

Objetivo General Determinar brechas de rendimiento de papa, cebada y trigo en distintos ambientes del sur de Chile. Obj. Esp. 1. Calibrar y validar los modelos SUBSTOR y CERES con los cultivares de papa, cebada y trigo Patagonia-INIA, Acuario y Pandora-INIA, respectivamente. 2. Aplicar los modelos de simulación en distintos ambientes y temporadas...

Faba bean is a cool-season, indeterminate grain legume grown in Mediterranean and temperate environments where yield loss associated with abiotic and biotic stress is common. Yield responses depend on the timing of stress relative to the species-specific vulnerable stages in the crop lifecycle. To determine the critical period for yield determinati...

Rapeseed has become progressively more important in international food trade due to increased human consumption and biofuel requirements. To accomplishing the growing demand is essential to answer if grain and oil yields of rapeseed are limited by the source of assimilates during grain filling. However, controversial results have been reported in t...

Understanding plasticity of grain yield components to the availability of assimilates and growing conditions is a key to continuing increasing grain yield of rapeseed and to face the challenge of satisfying the food demand in the 21st Century. A previous study showed that kernel weight (KW) of rapeseed has very high plasticity, even to compensate k...

The sensitivity of grain oil concentration under different source-sink ratios affecting grain weight and yield is central for breeding and management strategies of rapeseed. The objectives of this study were (i) to evaluate the response of grain oil concentration to source-sink reduction during grain filling and (ii) to assess the association betwe...

Background: Grain weight (GW) is a key component of sunflower yield and quality, but may be limited by maternal tissues. Cell growth is influenced by expansin proteins that loosen the plant cell wall. This study aimed to identify spatio-temporal expression of EXPN genes in sunflower reproductive organ tissues (ovary, pericarp, and embryo) and evalu...

The aim of the present study was to assess the yield of wheat in southern Chile under projected climate scenarios. The study had two steps, i) calibration and evaluation of the crop simulation model CROPSIM-CERES (in DSSAT 4.7) with the cultivar Pandora-INIA and ii) application of the model to assess the impact of climate scenarios on wheat yields....

Cereals and grain legume crops are widely sown along the world and their importance as a source of feed and food is indisputable mainly as a source of carbohydrates and proteins, respectively. Grain yield of these crops can be defined as the product of grain number per unit area and the average grain weight. Source-sink manipulations, in cereals, h...

Since the introduction of mechanized production in both developed and developing countries, crops and their management have undergone significant adaptation resulting in increased productivity. Historical yield increases in wheat have occurred across most regions of the world (20–88 kg ha⁻¹ year⁻¹), but climate trends threaten to dampen or reverse...

Since the introduction of mechanized production in both developed and developing countries, crops and their management have undergone significant adaptation resulting in increased productivity. Historical yield increases in wheat have occurred across most regions of the world (20–88 kg ha-1 year-1), but climate trends threaten to dampen or reverse...

Grain weight (GW) is an important component of grain yield and quality of sunflower and the improvement of this trait has been proposed as an aim for breeding of this crop. There is strong evidence suggesting the pre-flowering period as key to determining GW in different crops; however, the key traits and mechanisms controlling GW during this phase...

Quinoa high nutritive value increases interest worldwide, especially as a crop that could potentially feature in different cropping systems, however, climate change, particularly rising temperatures, challenges this and other crop species. Currently, only limited knowledge exists regarding the grain yield and other key traits response to higher tem...

There is evidence that sugars play essential roles during seed development. However, the knowledge about the role of sugars on grain growth of crops is still partial, and less is known on these sugars at early stages of grain growth when grain potential weight is set. This study evaluates the sugars concentration and the expression of genes involve...

Grain weight (GW) is key yield and quality component of sunflower. Previous studies have shown that GW is sensitive to shading during pre-flowering in sunflower. During the initial phase of grain growth, maternal tissues (ovaries and the pericarp of the grains) undergo a remarkable expansion as it is the main component of grain at this time, it has...

14th International Rapeseed Congress, Saskatoon, Canada (Poster).

Grain size is the result of the coordinated growth of the embryo, endosperm and maternal tissues. Understanding the clues of the development and growth of these tissues is essential for increasing grain weight, a key component of sunflower yield and quality. This research was aimed at evaluating the effect of pre-anthesis shading (source-sink ratio...

Grain yields in wheat can be limited by the assimilate supply (source) or by the carbohydrate demand of the grains (sink). Recently, there have been questions regarding the capability of crop models to simulate the physiology of source-sink interactions in crops; however, crop models have never been tested with source-sink manipulated data. We test...

The economic, social and environmental challenges of global agriculture have been dissected thoroughly in the context of the urgent need to increase food production. Three complementary factors contribute directly to larger agricultural output: superior varieties, better agronomic practices for growing individual crops, and enhanced spatial and tem...

The main components of crop yield are the number of grains per unit area and the average weight of grains. To understand the genetic and environmental clues determining both yield components is critical for further increasing yield potential of grain crops. Knowledge gained recently on physiological, genetic and biochemical mechanisms affecting gra...

En el cultivo de maravilla se ha demostrado que el período alrededor de la floración es crítico para la determinación del rendimiento. Sin embargo, existe controversia sobre la sensibilidad e interacción de los componentes del rendimiento (i.e., número y peso de grano) en respuesta a la disponibilidad de fotoasimilados durante dicha etapa. Esta inf...

El rendimiento de raps pueden estar limitado por la “fuente” de asimilados (e. g., radiación solar/fotosíntesis), por la “fuerza de los destinos” (e. g., número de granos) o por una co-limitación fuente-destino. El entendimiento de la interacción entre los componentes del rendimiento (e.g., número y peso de granos) y su respuesta ante cambios en la...

Background: Rapeseed has a high capacity to take up mineral nitrogen (N) from the soil, accumulating large amounts of N in vegetative tissue. The N content declines with cumulative leaf area index assessed from the top of the canopy, indicating that N distribution is driven to some extent by light distribution within the canopy, which is the main d...

Conceptual models of desirable trait profiles are used in wheat breeding to accumulate complementary physiological traits (Reynolds et al., 2009b). Whereas physiological breeding efforts have been focused on improving crop adaptation to abiotic stresses (Reynolds et al., 1998; Condon et al., 2004; Reynolds et al., 2005; Richards, 2006; Reynolds et...

Grain weight (GW) and number per unit area of land (GN) are the primary components of grain yield in wheat. In segregating populations both yield components often show a negative correlation among themselves. Here we use a recombinant doubled haploid population of 105 individuals developed from the CIMMYT varieties Weebill and Bacanora to understan...

Agreement that wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is scarcely limited by source of assimilates during grain fill has not been confirmed when source was drastically decrease in high yield potential environments. Dry matter (DM) and water dynamics of growing grains being possibly able to explain grain weight (GW) responses to source-sink ratios (S-Sratios)...

Taking into account that the ovary of flowers develop into the pericarp of grains in grasses and dicots such as sunflower, it has been proposed that the pericarp imposes a physical restriction to growing kernels. The physiological processes through which the pericarp controls kernel weight (KW) are only starting to be understood. The expansins are...

Chile has become one of the top twenty food exporters in the world. Fruit, tuber and grain crops are grown mainly in an area spanning between latitude 30° and 42°S. Southern Chile, an area with highly diverse ecological conditions, encompasses some of the most favorable environments in the world for crop productivity. Entrepreneurial farmers are ab...

The understanding of ecophysiological basis of wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) grain yield potential provides a useful framework to complement conventional breeding aimed at achieving genetic gains. This study analyzed the ecophysiological performance of an elite wheat mapping population (105 double-haploid lines derived from two modern cultivars, Bac...

Agricultural systems are challenged by global climatic change in a scenario of increasing food demand by a growing population. The increase in average temperature will be the main environmental factor affecting the crop development and productivity worldwide, although changes in carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration and rainfall are also expected. Glo...