Abstract: Drought and heat stresses are important threat limitations to plant growth and sustainable agriculture worldwide. Our objective is to provide a review of plant responses and adaptations to drought and elevated temperature including roots, shoots, and final yield and management approaches for alleviating adverse effects of the stresses based mostly on recent literature. The sections of the paper deal with plant responses including root growth, transpiration, photosynthesis, water use efficiency, phenotypic flexibility, accumulation of compounds of low molecular mass (eg proline and gibberellins), and expression of some genes and proteins for increasing the tolerance to the abiotic stresses. Soil and crop management practices to alleviate negative effects of drought and heat stresses are also discussed. Investigations involving determination of plant assimilate partitioning, phenotypic plasticity, and identification of most stress- tolerant plant genotypes are essential for understanding the complexity of the responses and for future plant breeding. The adverse effects of drought and heat stress can be mitigated by soil management practices, crop establishment, and foliar application of growth regulators by maintaining an appropriate level of water in the leaves due to osmotic adjustment and stomatal performance.

Abstract: Climate change impact assessments on agriculture are subject to large uncertainties, as demonstrated in the present review of recent studies for Africa. There are multiple reasons for differences in projections, including uncertainties in greenhouse gas emissions and patterns of climate change; assumptions on future management, aggregation, and spatial extent; and methodological differences. Still, all projections agree that climate change poses a significant risk to African agriculture. Most projections also see the possibility of increasing agricultural production under climate change, especially if suitable adaptation measures are assumed. Climate change is not the only projected pressure on African agriculture, which struggles to meet demand today and may need to feed an additional one billion individuals by 2050. Development strategies are urgently needed, but they will need to consider future climate change and its inherent uncertainties. Science needs to show how existing synergies between climate change adaptation and development can be exploited.

Abstract: Genetic improvement of grain yield (GY) and grain protein concentration (GPC) is impeded by large genotype×environment×management interactions and by compensatory effects between traits. Here global uncertainty and sensitivity analyses of the process-based wheat model SiriusQuality2 were conducted with the aim of identifying candidate traits to increase GY and GPC. Three contrasted European sites were selected and simulations were performed using long-term weather data and two nitrogen (N) treatments in order to quantify the effect of parameter uncertainty on GY and GPC under variable environments. The overall influence of all 75 plant parameters of SiriusQuality2 was first analysed using the Morris method. Forty-one influential parameters were identified and their individual (first-order) and total effects on the model outputs were investigated using the extended Fourier amplitude sensitivity test. The overall effect of the parameters was dominated by their interactions with other parameters. Under high N supply, a few influential parameters with respect to GY were identified (e.g. radiation use efficiency, potential duration of grain filling, and phyllochron). However, under low N, >10 parameters showed similar effects on GY and GPC. All parameters had opposite effects on GY and GPC, but leaf and stem N storage capacity appeared as good candidate traits to change the intercept of the negative relationship between GY and GPC. This study provides a system analysis of traits determining GY and GPC under variable environments and delivers valuable information to prioritize model development and experimental work.