Water Use Efficiency in Drought-Resilient Crops
Summary
Water use efficiency (WUE) in drought-resilient crops denotes the capacity to produce biomass or yield per unit of water consumed. Enhancing WUE is central to sustaining agricultural productivity under increasingly erratic rainfall and elevated evaporative demand linked to climate change. At the leaf level, WUE emerges from the balance between carbon assimilation through photosynthesis and water loss via transpiration, governed by stomatal aperture and mesophyll conductance. At the whole-plant and canopy scales, WUE incorporates the dynamics of root architecture, soil–plant hydraulic conductance and phenological timing of water uptake, with deep or proliferative rooting systems extending access to moisture reserves. Physiological traits such as conservative stomatal regulation, dynamic adjustment of root hydraulic conductance and maintenance of turgor under water deficit underpin drought resilience. These traits are complemented by breeding and agronomic innovations, including high-throughput phenotyping, de novo domestication of wild relatives and soil-moisture management practices that reduce evaporative losses. Together, these advances support the development of cultivars that sustain carbon fixation and grain filling during episodic drought, thereby securing global food supply amidst mounting water scarcity.
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Water Use Efficiency in Drought-Resilient Crops publication trend
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Technical terms
Water use efficiency (WUE): The ratio of biomass or yield produced per unit of water consumed by the crop.
Vapour pressure deficit (VPD): The difference in pressure between moisture inside the leaf and the surrounding air, driving transpiration.
Transpiration efficiency (TE): The amount of carbon fixed through photosynthesis per unit of water transpired.
Hydraulic conductance: The capacity for water movement through the soil–plant continuum, influenced by root architecture and xylem properties.
References
- Design, development, and assessment of a High-Throughput Screening (HTS) system for the macroscopic root water uptake modeling. Computers and Electronics in Agriculture (2023).
- Transpiration response to soil drying versus increasing vapor pressure deficit in crops: physical and physiological mechanisms and key plant traits. Journal of Experimental Botany (2023).
- Water-Use Efficiency: Advances and Challenges in a Changing Climate. Frontiers in Plant Science (2019).
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