Crop Responses to CO2, Temperature, and Water: Incorporating Lessons From Experimental Studies Into Dynamic Process Models

Oral Session

Special Sessions

The symposium seeks to improve our understanding of crop response to CO2, temperature, and soil water with the goals of enhancing our ability to characterize these responses in crop growth models and improving our understanding of crop responses to climate change. Discussions of free-air CO2 enrichment (FACE) research and in AgMIP (www.AgMIP.org) suggest three research topics that merit review: 1. What is the potential impact of fluctuating [CO2] on measured crop growth responses? A standing concern with FACE is that high frequency variation in [CO2] may inhibit growth. Recent experiments support these concerns and merit full discussion. 2. What is the potential impact of canopy temperature in explaining CO2 x temperature x water interactions? Under increased [CO2], stomatal conductance decreases, reducing transpiration but increasing canopy temperature. Simulation of this interactive effect arguably requires use of a model that incorporates an energy balance. 3. How can advances in plant molecular biology improve our understanding of the control of plant responses to CO2, temperature, and soil water availability? A better understanding of the stomatal response to [CO2] would allow us to model crop response to [CO2] more accurately. Similarly, there is evidence for multiple mechanisms for temperature responses, including changes in protein conformation and membrane activity. The symposium will encourage dialog among experimentalists and crop simulation modelers, leading to improvements into how the interactive factors are represented in crop models. The efforts will also spur discussion on the experiments required to further elucidate these effects. Finally, these efforts will promote continued dialog on methods to increase global food security in an uncertain world. In collaboration with AgMIP, we will organize a follow-up "hands on" workshop where researchers in small groups analyze datasets and test hypothesized effects in simulation models. The outcomes would appear in the Advances in Agricultural Simulation Modeling series.

Cosponsor(s):

C02 Crop Physiology and Metabolism, Climatology & Modeling