Can wild plant adaptations help crops

By Sam Yeaman

12 June 2025

Climate change is causing global heating and pronounced shifts in precipitation regimes, posing a substantial evolutionary challenge to life on Earth. Plants are particularly sensitive to climate, as they cannot relocate to mitigate its impact. To cope with historical environmental extremes, plants have evolved a range of strategies, from physiological changes that increase water use efficiency to shifting flowering time to avoid periods of drought. All such changes affect the energy available for growth, and understanding these trade-offs is particularly important in crop breeding, where the goal of maximizing yield must be balanced against the need to survive stress during growth. With some models predicting reductions in crop yield of 7 to 23% as a result of climate change (1), offsetting these effects will require inventive solutions. The diversity of adaptive strategies found in wild plant species may provide some of the answers.

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