Enhancing water use efficiency in wheat: 40 Years of genetic gains in the Argentine Pampas

IF 4.5 1区农林科学 Q1 AGRONOMY

European Journal of Agronomy Pub Date : 2025-04-02 DOI:10.1016/j.eja.2025.127620

Facundo Curin , María E. Otegui , Fernanda G. González

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Understanding the impact of breeding on water use and productivity, particularly in underexplored environments where pre-anthesis rainfall is often limited, is crucial for increasing wheat grain yield (GY) under future climatic scenarios. The aim of this work was to study the effects of breeding on GY and its physiological determinants, including water use and water use efficiency among cultivars released to the Argentine market over a 40-year period. Ten Argentinean cultivars classified into early cycle (EC) and late cycle (LC), based on time to anthesis, were grown across three seasons (2015, 2016, and 2017) under irrigated, rainfed, and water restricted conditions. Breeding increased GY by enhancing the harvest index (HI) in LC cultivars and the total biomass (BT) in EC cultivars. These improvements were accompanied by increases in water use efficiency for grain yield production (WUE_GY,ETc) of 1.11 % and 0.45 % per year among LC and EC cultivars, respectively, and a 0.29 % per year improvement in water use efficiency for biomass production (WUE_BT,ETc) among EC cultivars. Crop evapotranspiration (ET_C) decreased by 0.16 % per year exclusively in LC cultivars. Transpiration use efficiency (TE) improved by 0.55 % and 0.45 % per year for LC and EC cultivars, respectively, driven by increases in radiation use efficiency (RUE) of 0.46 % and 0.24 % per year. Notably, no changes in canopy conductance (g_C) were observed. Finally, the proportion of water transpired before anthesis (pPRE_ANT T_C) decreased by 0.45 % per year in LC cultivars. The results of this study indicate that genetic improvement in Argentina has enhanced GY by increasing WUE and RUE, rather than total ET_C. This is a particularly beneficial outcome for rainfed farming systems with limited water availability

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来源期刊

European Journal of Agronomy 农林科学-农艺学

CiteScore

8.30

自引率

7.70%

发文量

187

审稿时长

4.5 months

期刊介绍： The European Journal of Agronomy, the official journal of the European Society for Agronomy, publishes original research papers reporting experimental and theoretical contributions to field-based agronomy and crop science. The journal will consider research at the field level for agricultural, horticultural and tree crops, that uses comprehensive and explanatory approaches. The EJA covers the following topics: crop physiology crop production and management including irrigation, fertilization and soil management agroclimatology and modelling plant-soil relationships crop quality and post-harvest physiology farming and cropping systems agroecosystems and the environment crop-weed interactions and management organic farming horticultural crops papers from the European Society for Agronomy bi-annual meetings In determining the suitability of submitted articles for publication, particular scrutiny is placed on the degree of novelty and significance of the research and the extent to which it adds to existing knowledge in agronomy.