Rising atmospheric CO2 is reducing the protein concentration of a floral pollen source essential for North American bees.

At present, there is substantive evidence that the nutritional content of agriculturally important food crops will decrease in response to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, Ca However, whether Ca-induced declines in nutritional quality are also occurring for pollinator food sources is unknown. Flowering late in the season, goldenrod (Solidago spp.) pollen is a widely available autumnal food source commonly acknowledged by apiarists to be essential to native bee (e.g. Bombus spp.) and honeybee (Apis mellifera) health and winter survival. Using floral collections obtained from the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, we quantified Ca-induced temporal changes in pollen protein concentration of Canada goldenrod (Solidago canadensis), the most wide spread Solidago taxon, from hundreds of samples collected throughout the USA and southern Canada over the period 1842-2014 (i.e. a Ca from approx. 280 to 398 ppm). In addition, we conducted a 2 year in situtrial of S. Canadensis populations grown along a continuous Ca gradient from approximately 280 to 500 ppm. The historical data indicated a strong significant correlation between recent increases in Ca and reductions in pollen protein concentration (r(2)= 0.81). Experimental data confirmed this decrease in pollen protein concentration, and indicated that it would be ongoing as Ca continues to rise in the near term, i.e. to 500 ppm (r(2)= 0.88). While additional data are needed to quantify the subsequent effects of reduced protein concentration for Canada goldenrod on bee health and population stability, these results are the first to indicate that increasing Ca can reduce protein content of a floral pollen source widely used by North American bees.

Evidence for divergence of response in Indica, Japonica, and wild rice to high CO2 × temperature interaction.

High CO2 and high temperature have an antagonistic interaction effect on rice yield potential and present a unique challenge to adapting rice to projected future climates. Understanding how the differences in response to these two abiotic variables are partitioned across rice germplasm accessions may be key to identifying potentially useful sources of resilient alleles for adapting rice to climate change. In this study, we evaluated eleven globally diverse rice accessions under controlled conditions at two carbon dioxide concentrations (400 and 600 ppm) and four temperature environments (29 °C day/21 °C night; 29 °C day/21 °C night with additional heat stress at anthesis; 34 °C day/26 °C night; and 34 °C day/26 °C night with additional heat stress at anthesis) for a suite of traits including five yield components, five growth characteristics, one phenological trait, and four photosynthesis-related measurements. Multivariate analyses of mean trait data from these eight treatments divide our rice panel into two primary groups consistent with the genetic classification of INDICA/INDICA-like and JAPONICA populations. Overall, we find that the productivity of plants grown under elevated [CO2 ] was more sensitive (negative response) to high temperature stress compared with that of plants grown under ambient [CO2 ] across this diversity panel. We report differential response to CO2 × temperature interaction for INDICA/INDICA-like and JAPONICA rice accessions and find preliminary evidence for the beneficial introduction of exotic alleles into cultivated rice genomic background. Overall, these results support the idea of using wild or currently unadapted gene pools in rice to enhance breeding efforts to secure future climate change adaptation.

Assessment of cultivated and wild, weedy rice lines to concurrent changes in CO2 concentration and air temperature: determining traits for enhanced seed yield with increasing atmospheric CO2.

Although several studies have examined intra-specific variability in growth and yield to projected atmospheric CO2 concentration, [CO2], few have considered concurrent increases in air temperature and [CO2], and none have compared the relative responses of cultivated and wild, weedy crop lines. In the current study we quantified the growth and seed yield response of three cultivated ('Rondo', 'Clearfield 161', 'M204') and one wild (red) rice line ('Stuttgart-S' or 'Stg-S'), grown at ambient or +200µmolmol-1 [CO2] at one of three day/night temperatures (29/21, 31/23 or 33/25°C). Averaged among all cultivars, [CO2] increased biomass and seed yield, but conversely, increasing air temperature reduced the [CO2] response of both parameters. Among the cultivated and weedy rice tested, 'Rondo' and 'Stg-S' showed significant increases in aboveground biomass and seed yield with elevated [CO2] at 29/21°C; however, only 'Stg-S', the weedy rice line, demonstrated a significant increase with [CO2] at all growth temperatures. A regression analysis for this line indicated that the relative increase in seed yield with [CO2] and air temperature was positively associated with panicle and tiller number, but negatively correlated with the percentage of immature seed. An analysis of all lines indicated that the ratio of tiller production between CO2 treatments at 30 days after sowing (DAS) was a significant predictor of seed yield response to increasing [CO2] for all temperatures. These results suggest that: (i) inclusion of wild lines may broaden genotypic or phenotypic variation and assist in selection to temperature/[CO2]; and (ii) early differences in tiller formation may be an effective means to facilitate screening for CO2 sensitive rice genotypes.

Recent and projected increases in atmospheric CO2 concentration can enhance gene flow between wild and genetically altered rice (Oryza sativa).

Although recent and projected increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide can alter plant phenological development, these changes have not been quantified in terms of floral outcrossing rates or gene transfer. Could differential phenological development in response to rising CO(2) between genetically modified crops and wild, weedy relatives increase the spread of novel genes, potentially altering evolutionary fitness? Here we show that increasing CO(2) from an early 20(th) century concentration (300 µmol mol(-1)) to current (400 µmol mol(-1)) and projected, mid-21(st) century (600 µmol mol(-1)) values, enhanced the flow of genes from wild, weedy rice to the genetically altered, herbicide resistant, cultivated population, with outcrossing increasing from 0.22% to 0.71% from 300 to 600 µmol mol(-1). The increase in outcrossing and gene transfer was associated with differential increases in plant height, as well as greater tiller and panicle production in the wild, relative to the cultivated population. In addition, increasing CO(2) also resulted in a greater synchronicity in flowering times between the two populations. The observed changes reported here resulted in a subsequent increase in rice dedomestication and a greater number of weedy, herbicide-resistant hybrid progeny. Overall, these data suggest that differential phenological responses to rising atmospheric CO(2) could result in enhanced flow of novel genes and greater success of feral plant species in agroecosystems.