The world’s future wheat will need to withstand the climate crisis

There’s a race against time to figure out how to make wheat more climate resistant. Demand for staple crops like wheat is only expected to increase as the climate crisis makes the world’s food system more vulnerable. Wheat makes up 20% of calories in the average diet globally as an important dietary fiber. By 2050, the demand for wheat is predicted to climb 50% from today’s levels, according to the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). The problem is that wheat can only tolerate about 75°F (24°C), making it one of the more heat-sensitive crops compared to corn and soybeans.

As hotter temperatures and drought become the norm in places used to growing wheat, yields will be reduced. Scientists predict that in the worst-case scenario, where the global temperature rises by 4.3°C, wheat crop yields could fall globally by 22% each year. The best-case scenario isn’t great either: if the world warmed less than 2°C, global wheat yields would still fall 7% each year. Climate change will have at least some effect on most of the world’s wheat, with prolonged drought potentially straining 60% of regions that grow wheat by 2100.

Common wheat and Durum wheat—also known as pasta or macaroni wheat—have become the dominant types of wheat produced on farms globally. That could change with scientists now looking at forgotten varieties of wheat across the world that were less popular but may have traits that could breed a new type of wheat that’s more resistant to heat, drought, and disease. But the task is complicated, because monocropping, or uniformly growing only one type of crop, is less resilient to disease and weather conditions than when several types of a crop grown in the same field. Scientists must therefore find multiple types of wheat that could be grown in different, changing environments.

The process of selecting seeds from around the world happens at CIMMYT, an international research organization focused on developing new corn and wheat varieties. There are around 800,000 unique wheat seeds stored in gene banks globally, with a quarter of them stored at CIMMYT. The center tests around 5,000 newly bred types of wheat each year with farmers. The results are still a work in progress though, as scientists discover new and ongoing challenges for the crop to withstand, like the impact of rising nighttime temperatures, which has been understudied.

Tags: yields, crop, durum wheat, demand, climate resistant, wheat, drought