Are portable polyethylene tents reliable for imposing heat treatments in field-grown wheat?
Environmental variability has increased in recent decades and there are high expectations that heat waves will affect wheat productivity. Therefore, methods to quantify the effects of high temperature on wheat growth, yield, and yield-related traits under field conditions are greatly needed. In this...
| Autores: | , , |
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Estado: | Versión aceptada para publicación |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2021 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Varias* (Consorci de Biblioteques Universitáries de Catalunya, Centre de Serveis Científics i Acadèmics de Catalunya) |
| Repositorio: | Recercat. Dipósit de la Recerca de Catalunya |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:recercat.cat:10459.1/71928 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fcr.2021.108206 http://hdl.handle.net/10459.1/71928 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | High-temperature Global warming Climate change Field Wheat |
| Sumario: | Environmental variability has increased in recent decades and there are high expectations that heat waves will affect wheat productivity. Therefore, methods to quantify the effects of high temperature on wheat growth, yield, and yield-related traits under field conditions are greatly needed. In this opinion paper, we first describe the different approaches to quantify these effects, briefly highlighting their pros and cons. Portable polyethylene tents over the plots are cost-effective and convenient when relatively large plots are preferred and/or when there is no access to electricity in the field. This method shares a drawback with other approaches due to the tent reducing light intensity and altering other environmental factors like wind, humidity and evapotranspiration. We discuss to what degree there is an actual confounding effect (incorrectly assigning changes to heat effects that might be in part due to lower radiation). In that context, we not only discuss the issue theoretically, but also present results from a field experiment comparing a control (open uncovered plot), and a "roof-only" treatment (covering the plot with a polyethylene roof alone; thus impacting incoming radiation but not temperature). These treatments were imposed at either booting or the onset of grain filling, and testing two wheat cultivars having contrasting grain numbers per m2 and average grain weight. Supporting a theoretical framework that this reduced radiation would be compensated by increased radiation use efficiency, we show empirically that the roof-only treatment (which reduced incoming photosynthetically active radiation by 10.7 ± 0.2 % at noon on sunny days, but did not alter the temperature at any time of the day) did not result in any yield penalty with respect to the uncovered control plots. Thus, portable polyethylene tents are a reliable method to impose heat treatments in field experiments. Although other methods are more sophisticated and may be perceived as having fewer confounding factors, portable polyethylene tents are ideally suited to irrigated field experiments where electricity is not available, where relatively large plots are needed, and for research carried out on a limited budget. |
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