Plant adaptation to climate change - Where are we?

Abstract

Climate change poses critical challenges for population persistence in natural communities, agriculture and environmental sustainability, and food security. In this review, we discuss recent progress in climatic adaptation in plants. We evaluate whether climate change exerts novel selection and disrupts local adaptation, whether gene flow can facilitate adaptive responses to climate change, and if adaptive phenotypic plasticity could sustain populations in the short term. Furthermore, we discuss how climate change influences species interactions. Through a more in-depth understanding of these eco-evolutionary dynamics, we will increase our capacity to predict the adaptive potential of plants under climate change. In addition, we review studies that dissect the genetic basis of plant adaptation to climate change. Finally, we highlight key research gaps, ranging from validating gene function, to elucidating molecular mechanisms, expanding research systems from model species to other natural species, testing the fitness consequences of alleles in natural environments, and designing multifactorial studies that more closely reflect the complex and interactive effects of multiple climate change factors. By leveraging interdisciplinary tools (e.g., cutting-edge omics toolkits, novel ecological strategies, newly-developed genome editing technology), researchers can more accurately predict the probability that species can persist through this rapid and intense period of environmental change, as well as cultivate crops to withstand climate change, and conserve biodiversity in natural systems.

Keywords: candidate genes; evolutionary potential; genomics; landscape genomics; selection.

Figure 1.

Integration of methods from multiple disciplines enables us to predict plant climate change adaptive potential and dissect molecular mechanisms of plant climate adaptation. Red: Prediction of plant climate adaptative potential using advanced large-scale field experiments and simulated climate conditions in the lab; Blue: candidate gene identification employing diverse omics strategies; Purple: illustration of research gaps: Gene function validation, molecular mechanisms dissection, and field test of fitness consequences of climate-adapted molecular variation. Dark red: real-world applications in plant conservation and climate-resilient crop development. GWAS: Genome-Wide Association Study; NIL: Near-Isogenic Line; RIL: Recombinant Inbred Line; NAM: Nested Association Mapping; QTL: Quantitative Trait Locus