GRAIN SIZE AND PROTEIN CONTENT RESPONSE TO LATE HEAT AND DROUGHT STRESS IN WINTER WHEAT LANDRACES IN THE ATLAS MOUNTAINS OF MOROCCO Abstract uri icon

abstract

  • North African countries account for the highest wheat consumption per capita in the World and climate change is expected to increase average temperature by up to 40C and decrease precipitation by up to 30% by the end of the century, especially in areas like the highlands of Morocco. This area, home to over 200.000 families, is characterized by cold winters and late heat and drought stress. In these areas where straw is valued as animal feed and yields rarely exceed 1 t/ha, wheat landraces can be sources of tolerance traits to mitigate the expected climate change effects or can even be considered for direct use to increase production and ensure food security. For this a total of 41 winter wheat landraces were tested in augmented design using 4 checks in the highlands of Morocco for 2 years. In this experiment, 2 sowing dates were used to simulate the potential effects of climate change in the region. The aim of this study was to analyze the effect of late heat and drought stress in traits directly related to grain quality and protein content. Grain morphological attributes (grain length, width, area and perimeter), thousand kernel weight (TKW) and quality traits were collected. The results showed that all attributes were highly genetically controlled except for grain protein content. Grain protein content and TKW ranged from 9.5-14.3 % and 13.6-31.2 g respectively. The Length, width and area of the genotypes ranged from 4.9-7.6 mm and 1.1-3.5 mm and 10.9-19.6 mm2 respectively. The effect of the weather conditions was higher on grain width and grain area (30% of the variance explained by the interaction between the climate and the genotype), while it was 22%, 23%, 23%, for protein, Length, and TKW respectively. The grain width showed the highest correlation with TKW. The average grain width decrease was 27% when comparing the first and second dates. However, two landraces originated in China and Tajikistan were able to tolerate the stress and their decrease was only by 5-11%. As compared to the best modern check, these landraces showed lower grain width decrease and higher TKW under the most stressed conditions. The results showed that landraces have the potential of bringing new tolerance traits to climate change especially to the low input highlands of Morocco.

publication date

  • July 2019