Interaction between climate change drivers and nutrient fertility: temperature, CO2, and phosphorus

Authors: Reddy, Vangimalla; SINGH, SHARDENDU - University Of Washington

Submitted to: Meeting Abstract
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 12/4/2018
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Climate change is already affecting the global natural resource base that societies depend on to provide food, fiber, fuel, and recreational services. An increase in the global air temperature (T) and carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration is associated with the alterations in atmospheric chemistry such as emissions of greenhouse gases (e.g., CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, and chlorofluorocarbons). Temperature, CO2, and nutrient availability are among the major determinants of crop’s adaptation that drive their productivity. In natural settings, the productivity of an agro-ecosystem depends on the intricate balance between multiple environmental drivers. Lately, our understanding of crop response to individual environmental factors has advanced significantly, but information on multiple interacting factors is needed to understand full impacts of climate change on crop productivity. Even though a large proportion of crop productivity globally occurs in nutrient-limited conditions, crop response to climate change drivers has often been investigated under well-fertilized condition. Thus, the interactive impacts of temperature, CO2, and phosphorus (P) fertility on crop productivity are still unclear. To fill in this knowledge-gap, soybean was exposed to the combinations of two levels of each T (optimum and elevated, eT), CO2 (ambient and elevated), and P fertilization (sufficient and deficient, dP) throughout the season. Results showed that dP was the most deleterious to soybean vegetative growths while eT was the most detrimental to reproductive growth. The elevated levels of CO2 and temperature (separately or jointly) compensated, at least partially, the detrimental impacts of P deficiency on vegetative growth, such as biomass production. However, compensatory effects of eT under P deficiency completely disappeared for the reproductive development, such as pod development. This indicated that plant response to combined stresses (e.g., eT+dP) is exclusive, which might not be accurately inferred from results obtained when stresses (e.g., eT or dP) imposed individually. Furthermore, the impacts of a given stress situation might be even more complex due to the contrasting nature of responses between plant attributes (e.g., vegetative versus reproductive growth). The potential implication of these results might be associated with the P-fertilizer management due to its link with the agroecosystem and environmental pollution.