Abstract: A major challenge of the 21st century is to achieve food supply security under a changing climate and roughly a doubling in food demand by 2050 compared to present, the majority of which needs to be met by the cereals wheat, rice, maize, and barley. Future harvests are expected to be especially threatened through increased frequency and severity of extreme events, such as heat waves and drought, that pose particular challenges to plant breeders and crop scientists. Process-based crop models developed for simulating interactions between genotype, environment, and management are widely applied to assess impacts of environmental change on crop yield potentials, phenology, water use, etc. During the last decades, crop simulation has become important for supporting plant breeding, in particular in designing ideotypes, i.e. ‘model plants’, for different crops and cultivation environments. In this review we (i) examine the main limitations of crop simulation modelling for supporting ideotype breeding, (ii) describe developments in cultivar traits in response to climate variations, and (iii) present examples of how crop simulation has supported evaluation and design of cereal cultivars for future conditions. An early success story for rice demonstrates the potential of crop simulation modelling for ideotype breeding. Combining conventional crop simulation with new breeding methods and genetic modelling holds promise to accelerate delivery of future cereal cultivars for different environments. Robustness of model-aided ideotype design can further be enhanced through continued improvements of simulation models to better capture effects of extremes and the use of multi-model ensembles.

Abstract: Crop models are essential tools for assessing the threat of climate change to local and global food production1. Present models used to predict wheat grain yield are highly uncertain when simulating how crops respond to temperature2. Here we systematically tested 30 different wheat crop models of the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project against field experiments in which growing season mean temperatures ranged from 15 °C to 32 °C, including experiments with artificial heating. Many models simulated yields well, but were less accurate at higher temperatures. The model ensemble median was consistently more accurate in simulating the crop temperature response than any single model, regardless of the input information used. Extrapolating the model ensemble temperature response indicates that warming is already slowing yield gains at a majority of wheat-growing locations. Global wheat production is estimated to fall by 6% for each °C of further temperature increase and become more variable over space and time.

Abstract: THIS PAPER AIMS: (i) to identify at national scale areas where crop yield formation is currently most prone to climate-induced stresses, (ii) to evaluate how the severity of these stresses is likely to develop in time and space, and (iii) to appraise and quantify the performance of two strategies for adapting crop cultivation to a wide range of (uncertain) climate change projections. To this end we made use of extensive climate, crop, and soil data, and of two modelling tools: N-AgriCLIM and the WOFOST crop simulation model. N-AgriCLIM was developed for the automatic generation of indicators describing basic agroclimatic conditions and was applied over the whole of Finland. WOFOST was used to simulate detailed crop responses at four representative locations. N-AgriCLIM calculations have been performed nationally for 3829 grid boxes at a 10 x 10 km resolution and for 32 climate scenarios. Ranges of projected shifts in indicator values for heat, drought and other crop-relevant stresses across the scenarios vary widely – so do the spatial patterns of change. Overall, under reference climate the most risk-prone areas for spring cereals are found in south-west Finland, shifting to south-east Finland towards the end of this century. Conditions for grass are likely to improve. WOFOST simulation results suggest that CO2 fertilization and adjusted sowing combined can lead to small yield increases of current barley cultivars under most climate scenarios on favourable soils, but not under extreme climate scenarios and poor soils. This information can be valuable for appraising alternative adaptation strategies. It facilitates the identification of regions in which climatic changes might be rapid or otherwise notable for crop production, requiring a more detailed evaluation of adaptation measures. The results also suggest that utilizing the diversity of cultivar responses seems beneficial given the high uncertainty in climate change projections.