Drought And Heat Tolerance In Bread Wheat Landraces

Oct 07, 2022

By Sarah McLaughlin

Climate change is predicted to cause losses of more than 20% in agricultural production by 2050. With a growing global population, crops adapted to the effects of climate change, such as drought and heat, are necessary for the maintenance of productivity levels to meet the demand for food.

Scientists from the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), in collaboration with scientists from the Universidad Autónoma Agraria Antonio Narro, set out to analyze bread wheat landrace traits against seven climactic variables: mean temperature, maximum temperature, precipitation, precipitation seasonality, heat index of mean temperature, heat index of maximum temperature, and drought index.

Based on a sample of 990 bread wheat landraces from the CIMMYT genebank, the study discovered proteins associated with tolerance to drought and heat. With these results, new genotypes with resistant alleles can be selected for breeding programs to produce resistant varieties adapted to extreme environments and the effects of climate change.

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Video: How American Farmers Harvest 1.15 Billion Pounds of Sunflowers

Across the open plains of North Dakota and South Dakota, sunflower fields turn the American landscape into a sea of gold. In this farming documentary, we go inside modern sunflower farming to see how farmers plant, grow, harvest, clean, dry, process, and transform sunflower seeds into valuable products used every day.

In 2024, American farmers harvested about 1.15 billion pounds of sunflowers. This video follows the full journey from warm spring planting to combine harvesting, seed cleaning, storage, oil extraction, refining, roasting, packaging, and animal feed production.

You will see how sunflower seeds are processed into cooking oil, roasted snacks, bakery ingredients, birdseed, livestock feed, and useful byproducts. From golden fields to modern processing plants, this is the story of how a beautiful flower becomes one of America’s important oilseed crops.

Watch until the end to discover how sunflower farming connects farmers, machines, factories, food production, and sustainable agriculture.