Plant production in water-limited environments
Graeme Hammer, Mark Cooper, Matthew Reynolds
Abstract
Water-limited environments confound efforts to intensify plant production needed to address the impending shortfall in global food production capacity (Fischer et al., 2014). The additional influence of anthropogenic global warming on the extent of water limitation in key production environments, not only through anticipated effects on precipitation, but also via increased evaporative demand associated with higher temperature and vapour pressure deficit (e.g. Lobell et al., 2013), further exacerbates this global challenge, although increased atmospheric CO2 concentration and changes in seasonal climate patterns and crop system management can generate off-setting benefits (Parent et al., 2018; Hunt et al., 2019; Hammer et al., 2020).