International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics
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Assessing residue and tillage management options for carbon sequestration in future climate change scenarios
Get PDFSoil carbon depletion is a major concern for food security in drylands. The objective of this study is to test tillage with residue management under sequential and intercropping systems for carbon sequestration in semi-arid tropical drylands of India. We report the findings from a long-term field experiment (9 years) used to simulate the effect of residue and tillage management in Maize-chickpea sequential and Maize-Pigeonpea intercropping systems for the four possible future climate projections using APSIM model. These findings demonstrate a sustainable route with inclusive growth, as pledged at the UN climate change summit. A comparison of results under SSP 2.6 and 4.5 Wm−2 with SSP 8.5 shows that demand pressure from competitive marketplaces inhibits the establishment of soil carbon sinks and significantly reduces crop yields, likely due to indiscriminate chemical fertilizer use. We observed that a better decision in selecting cropping system might improve soil organic carbon content (SOC). SOC content ranging from 0.9 to 1.2% in Maize-pigeonpea intercropping and 0.85–1.1% in maize-chickpea sequential cropping systems, demonstrate good potential in the climate change mitigation exertions. Early SOC saturation (20 years) led to a decreased carbon stock in topsoil without residue addition practises. The addition of crop residues significantly increased SOC levels under both conventional and minimum tillage and created additional income for farmers. Simulation analysis showed impact of SOC changes on crop yield which remained nearly stable for 85 years. Therefore, hardy straw biomass of crops covering a large tract in dryland tropics, can be a scalable and sustainable solution to yield losses, while mitigating climate change through carbon sequestration
Genotype-by-environment interactions for starch, mineral, and agronomic traits in pearl millet hybrids evaluated across five locations in West Africa
Get PDFIntroduction: Pearl millet is a staple cereal grown in the harshest environments of arid and semi-arid regions of Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. It is the primary source of calories for millions of people in these regions because it has better adaptation to harsh environmental conditions and better nutritional traits than many other cereals. By screening the pearl millet inbred germplasm association panel (PMiGAP), we earlier reported the best genotypes with the highest concentration of slowly digestible and resistant starch in their grains.
Methods: In the current study, we tested these 20 top-performing pearl millet hybrids, identified based on starch data, in a randomised block design with three replications at five locations in West Africa, viz. Sadore and Konni (Niger), Bambey (Senegal), Kano (Nigeria), and Bawku (Ghana). Phenotypic variability was assessed for agronomic traits and mineral traits (Fe and Zn).
Results and discussion: Analysis of variance demonstrated significant genotypic, environmental, and GEI effects among five testing environments for agronomic traits (days to 50% flowering, panicle length, and grain yield), starch traits (rapidly digestible starch, slowly digestible starch, resistant starch, and total starch), and mineral trait (iron and zinc). Starch traits, such as rapidly digestible starch (RDS) and slowly digestible starch (SDS), showed nonsignificant genotypic and environmental interactions but high heritability, indicating the lower environmental influence on these traits in the genotype × testing environments. Genotype stability and mean performance across all the traits were estimated by calculating the multi-trait stability index (MTSI), which showed that genotypes G3 (ICMX207070), G8 (ICMX207160), and G13 (ICMX207184) were the best performing and most stable among the five test environments
Editorial: Application of network-theoretic approaches in biology
Get PDFBiological complexity explicitly occurs through non-linear interactions mostly entangled in nature. This complexity comprises many interactions among entities (viz., genes, proteins, metabolites, and species) at various spatial and temporal scales as complex adaptive systems showing characteristic features like self-organisation, modularity, emergence, non-linear interactions, collective response, and adaptation. The theory of complex networks provides an appropriate formal framework for modelling of such complex systems in order to obtain meaningful insights into biological complexity at the local or gene family level (Mallikarjuna et al., 2020; Mallikarjuna et al., 2022) and at the global scale (Sharma et al., 2021). The ocean of biological data generated by high-throughput technologies in the current genomics era have led to the application of various network-theoretic empirical investigations, in which the formal framework is used to obtain meaningful insights into system complexity. Our effort to pool studies on network-theoretic approaches in biology to the understanding of biological complexity has resulted in the compilation of ten research studies in the current Research Topic entitled Application of network theoretic approaches in biology, which are broadly categorised and highlighted under the following headings
High confidence QTLs and key genes identified using Meta-QTL analysis for enhancing heat tolerance in chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.)
Get PDFThe rising global temperatures seriously threaten sustainable crop production, particularly the productivity and production of heat-sensitive crops like chickpeas. Multiple QTLs have been identified to enhance the heat stress tolerance in chickpeas, but their successful use in breeding programs remains limited. Towards this direction, we constructed a high-density genetic map spanning 2233.5 cM with 1069 markers. Using 138 QTLs reported earlier, we identified six Meta-QTL regions for heat tolerance whose confidence interval was reduced by 2.7-folds compared to the reported QTLs. Meta-QTLs identified on CaLG01 and CaLG06 harbor QTLs for important traits, including days to 50% flowering, days to maturity, days to flower initiation, days to pod initiation, number of filled pods, visual score, seed yield per plant, biological yield per plant, chlorophyll content, and harvest index. In addition, key genes identified in Meta-QTL regions like Pollen receptor-like kinase 3 (CaPRK3), Flowering-promoting factor 1 (CaFPF1), Flowering Locus C (CaFLC), Heat stress transcription factor A-5 (CaHsfsA5), and Pollen-specific leucine-rich repeat extensins (CaLRXs) play an important role in regulating the flowering time, pollen germination, and growth. The consensus genomic regions, and the key genes reported in this study can be used in genomics-assisted breeding for enhancing heat tolerance and developing heat-resilient chickpea cultivars
Editorial: Trait mining and genetic enhancement of millets and potential crops: modern prospects for ancient grains
Get PDFOver the last decades, agricultural productivity has witnessed a significant increase. Yet, only 12 crops provide 75% of the world’s food supplies and three major crops, rice, wheat and maize, provide 50% of global dietary requirements (Joshi et al., 2019). These leading cereals have inherently low micronutrient concentrations, and overreliance on these crops leads to micronutrient deficiencies (Joshi et al., 2020). Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asian countries are the hot spots where the prevalence of micronutrient malnutrition is very high (Harding et al., 2018). For instance, In India alone, over 80% of the population is at risk of calcium deficiency and up to 25% suffer from iron and zinc deficiency (Ritchie et al., 2018).
Many low-volume, high-value crops cultivated for millennia have high nutritional quality and can contribute to global food security and help combat hidden hunger. Therefore,
dietary diversification by including micronutrients and vitamins rich minor and neglected food crops in the existing cropping systems is one of the most effective ways of sustainably reducing hidden hunger (Joshi et al., 2018). Millets and pseudocereals have the ability to provide a reasonable yield in the harshest environmental conditions of the world. Their ability to withstand environmental stresses and fragile ecosystems makes them ideal dualpurpose crops for grain and fodder production in low-input marginal agricultural systems prevalent in semi-arid regions. However, millets and pseudocereals have received little
scientific attention and the control of economic traits remains unknown (Joshi et al., 2019; Sood et al., 2019)
ICRISAT AND WFP: India Working Paper Climate Change Impacts on Food Security and Nutrition of India Foresight Analysis
No full textAgriculture is a significant and primary sector of the Indian economy and is crucial for ensuring the food, nutrition, and livelihood security of about 80% of the population. Even though India has achieved ‘selfsufficiency’
in food grains production through Green Revolution, it faces challenges like loss of soil fertility, waterlogging, ground, and surface water pollution, intensified pests and diseases, increased farm input prices, and regional disparity (Cummings, 2019). In addition, climate change has added a new dimension to the existing problems by posing a significant threat to Indian agriculture in general and food and nutrition security in particular. The 2022 global food policy reported that by 2030 India is likely to be the country worst affected by climate change (IFPRI, 2022) and identified as one of the highly vulnerable countries to climate change (INCCA, 2010). It is estimated that about 17 million Indians may face famines due to reduced agricultural productivity and disruption in the food supply chain (IFPRI, 2022). The estimated loss due to climate change is about 37 billion dollars for 2018 which is five times higher than the loss incurred in 1990 and 2017 due to climate change. Furthermore, the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) claims that 2010:2019 was the country’s warmest decade, signaling the impact of global warming on India. As a result of these climate changes and variability, our agricultural systems face heightened uncertainty (Pingali et al., 2019)
UAV-based Digital Field Phenotyping for Crop Nitrogen Estimation using RGB Imagery
No full textNitrogen (N) is one of the essential nutrients required for healthy crop growth. Field phenotyping for nitrogen stress symptoms is laborious and time-consuming, that way, it is a major bottleneck in nutrition-inclusive agricultural research. Recent advancements in sensors and image processing facilitate color-based quantification of crop greenness from high-resolution RGB images. In this paper, we present unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based digital field phenotyping for the estimation of crop nitrogen content. For this, we conducted a field experiment during the post-rainy season of 2021 at International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Hyderabad, India with long-stature cereal model crop, sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L.) cultivated under three different regimes varying in moisture and soil nitrogen content. A high-resolution RGB sensor (XenmuseX5S) mounted on DJI Matric 210 quadcopter was used for capturing the spatiotemporal imagery. Five different RGB spectrum vegetation indices indicating crop greenness were correlated with ground truth values of crop N content using simple linear regression and stepwise backward regression. With a prediction potential of R 2 =0.65 and MAE=0.27 for an independent dataset, we present a stepwise backward linear regression model as a promising approach for real-time estimation of the N status of sorghum crop
Navigating the landscape of global sustainable livelihood research: past insights and future trajectory
Get PDFSustainable livelihoods (SL) have emerged as a crucial area of focus in global environmental change research, aligning with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This field is rapidly gaining prominence in sustainability science and has become one of the primary research paradigms. In our study, we conducted scientometrics analysis using the ISI Web of Science core collection database to examine research patterns and frontier areas in SL research. We selected 6441 papers and 265,759 references related to SL published from 1991 to 2020. To achieve this, we employed advanced quantitative analysis tools such as CiteSpace and VOSviewer to quantitatively analyze and visualize the evolution of literature in the SL research field. Our overarching objectives were to understand historical research characteristics, identify the knowledge base, and determine future research trends. The results revealed an exponential increase in SL research documentation since 1991, with the Consortium of International Agricultural Research Center (CGIAR) contributing the highest volume of research documents and citations. Key journals in this field included World Development, Global Environmental Change, Ecological Economics, and Ecology and Society. Notably, Singh RK and Shackleton CM emerged as prolific authors in SL research. Through our analysis, we identified six primary clusters of research areas: livelihoods, conservation, food security, management, climate change, and ecosystem services. Additionally, we found that tags such as rural household, agricultural intensification, cultural intensification, and livelihoods vulnerability remained relevant and represented active research hotspots. By analyzing keyword score relevance, we identified frontier areas in SL research, including mass tourism, solar home systems, artisanal and small-scale mining, forest quality, marine-protected areas, agricultural sustainability, sustainable rangeland management, and indigenous knowledge. These findings provide valuable insights to stakeholders regarding the historical, current, and future trends in SL research, offering strategic opportunities to enhance the sustainability of livelihoods for farmers and rural communities in alignment with the SDGs
Gender inclusive food systems for sustainable healthy diets in low and middle-income countries
Get PDFAround the world, women along with men are key actors in every aspect of food systems, as farmers, processors, wageworkers, traders, and consumers. Despite their significant role, the evidence shows that women are not only structurally disadvantaged in the food system, but also their contributions are often undervalued. Unraveling the gender dynamics in food systems is necessary to address gender inequalities and develop efficient, inclusive, and resilient food systems. Some positive actions toward inclusion are being integrated, however, more efforts are needed. To achieve sustainable food systems, gender equity, and women’s empowerment are needed across different nodes of the food systems. Men and women have different experiences and different strategies throughout the food system. Therefore, understanding such gender differences could facilitate the development of gender-sensitive policies and programs that could help achieve sustainable, nutrition-sensitive, and inclusive food systems. We have used the most recent food systems framework developed by the High-Level Panel of Experts (HLPE) and examined the perspective on how gender dynamics shape men’s and women’s participation in food systems and to identify the entry points for improved gender equity and inclusion to attain sustainable food systems for healthy diets in low and middle-income countries
Exploring the sorghum race level diversity utilizing 272 sorghum accessions genomic resources
Get PDFDue to evolutionary divergence, sorghum race populations exhibit significant genetic and morphological variation. A k-mer-based sorghum race sequence comparison identified the conserved k-mers of all 272 accessions from sorghum
and the race-specific genetic signatures identified the gene variability in 10,321 genes (PAVs). To understand sorghum race structure, diversity and domestication, a deep learning-based variant calling approach was employed
in a set of genotypic data derived from a diverse panel of 272 sorghum accessions. The data resulted in 1.7 million high-quality genome-wide SNPs and identified selective signature (both positive and negative) regions through a
genome-wide scan with different (iHS and XP-EHH) statistical methods. We discovered 2,370 genes associated with selection signatures including 179 selective sweep regions distributed over 10 chromosomes. Co-localization of these regions undergoing selective pressure with previously reported QTLs and genes revealed that the signatures of selection could be related to the domestication of important agronomic traits such as biomass and plant height. The developed k-mer signatures will be useful in the future to identify the
sorghum race and for trait and SNP markers for assisting in plant breeding programs