Assessing Plant Genetic Resources for Climate- Change Adaptive Traits Heat Traits

Abstract

The vulnerability of wheat is likely to increase due to an increase of heat stress according to recent wheat-production simulation models combined with local climate-change data. This is particularly an issue affecting dryland areas where global climate models all converge in forecasting temperature increase in these areas (Girvetz et al. 2009). The greenhouse gas emissions are causing the heating up of the atmosphere (Mendelsohn and Dinar 2009), and the combination of high temperatures and low humidity increases the risk of heat stress for crops (Gobin 2012). Recent model simulations with greenhouse gas emissions factored in have shown that the occurrence of recent extreme heat waves was likely due to climate change (Herring et al. 2014).