Resilience of C4 Crops to Climate Vagaries

Abstract

Climate change poses significant challenges to agriculture worldwide, affecting productivity and threatening food security. Key drivers of climate change like altered water availability, temperature fluctuations and increased carbon dioxide concentrations, influence crop performance and ecosystem stability. The World has committed to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger by 2030. But climate change is undermining the livelihoods and food security of the rural poor, who constitute almost 80% of the world’s poor. If plant genotypes that can withhold climate extremes are insufficient, food scarcity occurs, and the price of existing food resources would increase enormously, making it practically hard for the rural poor to obtain enough food. To avoid this happening, we need to develop plant genotypes that are climate resilient. Photosynthetic pathways in plants C3, C4, and CAM play a critical role in determining their adaptability to changing climatic conditions. Understanding the physiological responses of C4 crops to various environmental stresses like water and temperature stress, highlights their potential for future climate resilience. Due to the efficient carbon concentrating mechanism, low stomatal conductance and high water use efficiency in C4 plants, they are expected to show higher drought tolerance relative to C3 plants. Studying the responses of C4 crops to climate change is essential as they play a vital role in global food production, especially in tropical and subtropical regions prone to climate extremes. While C4 crops are more resilient to heat and drought than their C3 counterparts, their yield potential is still constrained by the increasing severity of abiotic stresses, such as prolonged droughts, heatwaves, and soil salinity. Understanding how C4 crops respond to these challenges can provide insights into optimizing their growth and productivity in future climate scenarios. These insights are important for breeding stress-resilient varieties and improving crop management practices, to ensure global food security amidst escalating climate challenges.