{"id":19362,"date":"2019-12-20T11:37:02","date_gmt":"2019-12-20T11:37:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/research-blog\/?p=19362"},"modified":"2021-11-03T14:33:57","modified_gmt":"2021-11-03T14:33:57","slug":"climate-change-is-hurting-farmers-even-seeds-are-under-threat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/research-blog\/2019\/12\/20\/climate-change-is-hurting-farmers-even-seeds-are-under-threat\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate change is hurting farmers \u2013 even seeds are under threat"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even brief hot spells can damage seed quality – with implications for future food security, writes Professor of Agriculture Richard Ellis in The Conversation<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Climate change is already affecting the amount of food that farmers can produce. Several recent extreme weather events, which are only likely to become more frequent as the world continues heating up, provide stark illustrations of what this impact can look like. For example, crop sowing in the UK was delayed in autumn 2019 and some emerging crops were damaged\u00a0because of wet weather<\/a>. Meanwhile in Australia,\u00a0considerable drought<\/a>\u00a0has been\u00a0immensely damaging<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But climate change can also have a knock-on impact on farming by affecting the quality of seeds, making it harder to establish seedlings that then grow into mature, food-producing plants. My research group has\u00a0recently published a study<\/a>\u00a0showing that even brief periods of high temperature or drought can reduce seed quality in rice, depending on exactly when they occur in the seed\u2019s development.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, it is possible to breed improved varieties to help crops adapt to the changing climate. And the resources needed to do this are being collected and conserved in \u201cgenebanks\u201d, libraries of seeds conserving crop plant diversity for future use.<\/p>\n

In much of the developing world in particular, the supply of affordable, good-quality seed limits farmers\u2019 ability to establish crops. Seeds need to be stored between harvest and later sowing and poor-quality seeds don\u2019t survive very long in storage. Once planted,\u00a0low-quality seeds<\/a>\u00a0are less likely to emerge as seedlings and more likely to fail later on, producing a lower plant density in the field and a lower crop yield as a result.<\/p>\n

For this reason, investigating seed quality is an important way of assessing such effects of climate on cereal crop production. We already know that climate change can reduce the quality of cereal seeds used\u00a0for food<\/a>,\u00a0food ingredients<\/a>\u00a0and for planting\u00a0future crops<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The main factor that affects seed quality in this way\u00a0tends to be temperature<\/a>, but the amount and timing of rainfall is\u00a0also important<\/a>. This impact can come from changes in average weather patterns, but short periods of extreme temperature or rainfall are just\u00a0as important<\/a>\u00a0when they coincide with sensitive stages in crop development. For example,\u00a0research in the 1990s<\/a>\u00a0revealed that brief high temperature periods during and immediately before a crop flowers reduces the number of seeds produced and therefore the resulting grain yield in many cereal crops.<\/p>\n

Our research<\/a>\u00a0has now confirmed that seed quality in rice is damaged most when brief hot spells coincide with early seed development. It also revealed that drought during the early development of the seeds also reduces their quality at maturity. And, unsurprisingly, the damage is even greater when both these things happen together.<\/p>\n

In contrast, warmer temperatures later in the maturation process\u00a0can benefit<\/a>\u00a0rice seed quality as the seeds dry out. But flooding that submerges the seed can also cause damage, which\u00a0gets worse<\/a>\u00a0the later it occurs during maturation. This shows why we have to include the effects of changing rainfall as well as temperature and the precise timing of extreme weather when looking at how seed quality is affected.<\/p>\n

Future seeds<\/strong><\/p>\n

Our research has also shown that different seed varieties have different levels of resilience to these environmental stresses. This means that farming in the future will depend on selecting and breeding the right varieties to respond to the changing climate.<\/p>\n

The world now has a global network of genebanks storing seeds from a wide variety of plants, which helps safeguard their genetic diversity. For example, the\u00a0International Rice Genebank<\/a>\u00a0maintains more than 130,000 samples of cultivated species of rice, its wild relatives and closely-related species, while the\u00a0AfricaRice genebank<\/a>\u00a0maintains 20,000 samples.<\/p>\n

Our finding mean that, when scientists breed new crop varieties using genebank samples as \u201cparents\u201d, they should include the ability to produce high-quality seed in stressful environments in the variety\u2019s selected traits. In this way, we should be able to produce new varieties of seeds that can withstand the increasingly extreme pressures of climate change.<\/p>\n

This post first appeared on The Conversation<\/a>, 20 December 2019.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

Richard Ellis is Professor of Crop Production at the University of Reading<\/a>, specialising in reproductive crop plant biology and the effect of environment on seeds, plants and crops. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology. He has previously blogged for Connecting Research on the secrets of a perfect seed<\/a> and its vulnerability to climate change.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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