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Understanding the actual impacts of climatic warming on winter-sown wheat production will benefit cultivar breeding efforts and agronomic innovations and may help to improve food security. Therefore, we conducted a comprehensive study across the main Chinese winter wheat cropping regions, comprising field warming experiments at four locations and an analysis of 36 years of winter wheat yield data. In the field warming experiments, an increase of 1.0 °C in nighttime temperature enhanced wheat yield by 10.1% on average ( P < 0.05 ). Warming-induced enhancement of 1000-grain weight explained most of these yield increases. Warming shortened the length of pre-flowering phase by 5.4 days, while it prolonged the length of post-flowering phase by 3.8 days. Grain yield increases with warming were similar across experimental sites, even though warming-induced changes in the length of growth periods decreased with increasing ambient temperature. Our analysis of the historical data set was consistent with our field warming experiments; between 1980 and 2015, the major Chinese cropping regions experienced significant warming, especially in daily minimum temperature. Across the historical data set, daily minimum temperature was positively correlated with wheat yield (142.0 kg ha −1 °C −1 ). Our findings are inconsistent with previous reports of yield decreases with warming and may help to inform policy decisions and agronomic innovations of Chinese wheat production to better cope with future climate warming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Crop model projections and historical data analyses have shown that global warming may cause serious decrease in crop productivity, however, many uncertainities remain on the impact quantification due to the unclear understanding of actual crop response. Therefore, we performed a three-year field warming experiment with free air temperature increase (FATI) facility to investigate the actual response of midseason rice growth in East China. There were four treatments (AW: all-day warming; DW: daytime warming; NW: nighttime warming; CK: ambient control) with three replicates. This FATI facility presented a good simulation of the local air temperature pattern with an increase in the daily mean temperature of about 1.1–2.0°C during rice whole growth duration compared to the ambient control. Warming shortened the pre-heading phase respectively by 3.3d, 1.7d and 2.0d in the AW, DW and NW plots, while the post-heading phase stayed almost unchanged. During the three years, warming slightly decreased the aboveground biomass by an average of 9.1%, 10.3% and 3.3%, and the grain yield by an average of 0.9%, 6.4% and 6.1% in the AW, DW and NW plots, respectively. Warming tended to decrease rice photosynthesis rate and stimulate the nighttime respiration rate. It also enlarged the flag leaf area and increased its chlorophyll content. No significant difference and interaction in the actual response of rice growth were found between the warming regimes. The above evidences suggest that the expected warming less than 2.0°C may not cause significant decrease in rice productivity in East China. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]