Genetic fixes may save crops from climate stress

Rising heat, relentless drought, violent downpours and a steadily thickening blanket of carbon dioxide are reshaping the planet on which agriculture depends.

In a recent review, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign plant biologist Stephen Long has surveyed that changing landscape and the research aimed at ensuring food crops can still thrive.

The picture he paints is sobering, yet not without hope, pointing to genetic discoveries that could keep crops productive even as the climate veers into unfamiliar territory.

Agriculture is strained by climate shifts

Long pointed out how quickly the air around us is changing. “By 2050-60, crops will experience a significantly different environment from today,” he said.

A key driver is carbon dioxide, whose concentration has climbed far beyond the levels in which modern agriculture evolved. From a pre-industrial baseline near 280 parts per million, “atmospheric CO2 reached 427 ppm in 2024 and is projected to be about 600 ppm by 2050.”

That shift alone would alter plant metabolism, but it arrives alongside extreme weather. Intensifying heat waves can sterilize pollen or wither seedlings, while droughts cut yields outright. Swollen rivers drown fields, and storms topple grain at harvest.

Long noted that those converging stresses will reduce harvests across much of the world unless crops themselves change.

Seeds hold key to resilience

Plant breeders have responded by scouring global seed vaults and wild relatives for crop varieties already carrying some climate resilience.

For instance, the experts identified rice lines that survive two weeks of total submergence, an asset in flood-prone deltas. They also found wheat strains that set grain under heat spikes that would devastate ordinary cultivars.

The underlying genes, once identified, can be bred into elite varieties or added directly with genome-editing tools.

Such work is painstaking. Researchers must link each trait to its genetic signature, cross or engineer it into agronomic lines, then test performance across years and regions. Even so, Long argued that tapping this standing diversity is one of the surest ways to buffer global harvests.

Taming the plants’ thirst

As temperatures climb, the atmosphere’s capacity to pull water from foliage rises too, forcing plants to close tiny pores called stomata to conserve moisture. That tactic, however, also limits the intake of CO2 for photosynthesis.

Several laboratories have engineered climate-resilient crops to finesse the trade-off. By boosting a sensor protein that tunes stomatal opening, field-grown tobacco cut water loss but maintained growth.

Separate experiments in rice and wheat reduced stomatal density, improving water-use efficiency by up to one-fifth without penalty to yield.

Although these demonstrations involve genetic engineering, Long noted that parallel gains might be possible through conventional breeding once the relevant genes are flagged.

CO2 fuels growth – and pests

Higher carbon dioxide, the very gas driving the crisis, can stimulate photosynthesis – up to a point. Yet it also upsets the balance of enzymes, sometimes depressing protein content or encouraging pest outbreaks.

Scientists have begun tweaking the regulators of rubisco, the key enzyme that captures CO2, so photosynthesis keeps pace with future atmospheres without unintended side effects.

Such molecular fine-tuning illustrates how adaptation must occur on several fronts at once: shielding plants from heat and drought, refining how they handle surplus CO2, and safeguarding nutritional quality.

Funding gaps threaten agriculture gains

Long cites U.S. maize as proof that breeding investments pay off. “Between 1980 and 2024, U.S. maize yields doubled while sorghum improved just 12%,” he said.

Maize benefited from vast private-sector spending on hybrid development, biotechnology, and agronomy. Sorghum, largely a public-sector crop in lower-income countries, lacked equivalent support.

That disparity, Long warns, could repeat across other staples – rice, wheat, cassava, legumes – unless governments and philanthropies step in.

Private companies may not devote the required resources to crops grown mainly by smallholders or in poor regions, yet those crops undergird food security for billions.

Crop innovation vs. climate clock

Even with ample funding, adapting crops is slow. A promising gene identified today may take a decade to reach farmers’ seed bags after regulatory review, field trials, and scale-up.

That timeline collides with climate models showing sharp crop stress intensification in the 2030s and 2040s.

Long’s review thus serves as both roadmap and alarm, underscoring the urgency of accelerating research pathways and streamlining approval processes without compromising safety.

Hope inside the genome

Despite the formidable challenge, Long’s synthesis is not fatalistic. It catalogs concrete advances – heat-tolerant rice, drought-savvy wheat, water-frugal tobacco prototypes – that could be transferred across crop species.

With sufficient investment and international collaboration, the same engineering mindset that transformed maize could be deployed where it is now most needed.

The task, Long concluded, is to harness biology faster than climate pressures dismantle current production systems. His review makes clear that the science exists to do so.

The remaining question is whether society will commit the resources and political resolve to bring those discoveries to scale before the planet’s pantries feel the full heat of global change.

The study is published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.

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