Abstract: Europe accounts for around 20% of the global cereal production and is a net exporter of ca. 15% of that production. Increasing global demand for cereals justifies questions as to where and by how much Europe’s production can be increased to meet future global market demands, and how much additional nitrogen (N) crops would require. The latter is important as environmental concern and legislation are equally important as production aims in Europe. Here, we used a country-by-country, bottom-up approach to establish statistical estimates of actual grain yield, and compare these to modelled estimates of potential yields for either irrigated or rainfed conditions. In this way, we identified the yield gaps and the opportunities for increased cereal production for wheat, barley and maize, which represent 90% of the cereals grown in Europe. The combined mean annual yield gap of wheat, barley, maize was 239 Mt, or 42% of the yield potential. The national yield gaps ranged between 10 and 70%, with small gaps in many north-western European countries, and large gaps in eastern and south-western Europe. Yield gaps for rainfed and irrigated maize were consistently lower than those of wheat and barley. If the yield gaps of maize, wheat and barley would be reduced from 42% to 20% of potential yields, this would increase annual cereal production by 128 Mt (39%). Potential for higher cereal production exists predominantly in Eastern Europe, and half of Europe’s potential increase is located in Ukraine, Romania and Poland. Unlocking the identified potential for production growth requires a substantial increase of the crop N uptake of 4.8 Mt. Across Europe, the average N uptake gaps, to achieve 80% of the yield potential, were 87, 77 and 43 kg N ha(-1) for wheat, barley and maize, respectively. Emphasis on increasing the N use efficiency is necessary to minimize the need for additional N inputs. Whether yield gap reduction is desirable and feasible is a matter of balancing Europe’s role in global food security, farm economic objectives and environmental targets.

Abstract: The Green Revolution combined advancements in breeding and agricultural practice, and provided food security to millions of people. Daily food supply is still a major issue in many parts of the world and is further challenged by future climate change. Fortunately, life science research is currently making huge progress, and the development of future crop plants will be explored. Today, plant breeding typically follows one gene per trait. However, new scientific achievements have revealed that many of these traits depend on different genes and complex interactions of proteins reacting to various external stimuli. These findings open up new possibilities for breeding where variations in several genes can be combined to enhance productivity and quality. In this review we present an overview of genes determining plant architecture in barley, with a special focus on culm length. Many genes are currently known only through their mutant phenotypes, but emerging genomic sequence information will accelerate their identification. More than 1000 different short-culm barley mutants have been isolated and classified in different phenotypic groups according to culm length and additional pleiotropic characters. Some mutants have been connected to deficiencies in biosynthesis and reception of brassinosteroids and gibberellic acids. Still other mutants are unlikely to be connected to these hormones. The genes and corresponding mutations are of potential interest for development of stiff-straw crop plants tolerant to lodging, which occurs in extreme weather conditions with strong winds and heavy precipitation.

Abstract: Continuous crop rotation modeling is a prospective trend that, compared to 1-crop or discrete year-by-year calculations, can provide more accurate results that are closer to real conditions. The goal of this study was to compare the water balance and yields estimated by the HERMES crop rotation model for present and future climatic conditions in the Czech Republic. Three locations were selected, representing important agricultural regions with different climatic conditions. Crop rotation (spring barley, silage maize, winter wheat, winter rape) was simulated from 1981-2080. The 1981-2010 period was covered by measured meteorological data, while 2011-2080 was represented by a transient synthetic weather series from the weather generator M& Rfi. The data were based on 5 circulation models, representing an ensemble of 18 CMIP3 global circulation models, to preserve much of the uncertainty of the original ensemble. Two types of crop management were compared, and the influences of soil quality, increasing atmospheric CO2 and adaptation measures (i. e. sowing date changes) were also considered. Results suggest that under a ‘dry’ scenario (such as GFCM21), C-3 crops in drier regions will be devastated for a significant number of seasons. Negative impacts are likely even on premium-quality soils regardless of flexible sowing dates and accounting for increasing CO2 concentrations. Moreover, in dry conditions, the use of crop rotations with catch crops may have negative impacts, exacerbating the soil water deficit for subsequent crops. This approach is a promising method for determining how various management strategies and crop rotations can affect yields as well as water, carbon and nitrogen cycling.