Sigridur Dalmannsdottir
Research Scientist
(+47) 465 46 249
sigridur.dalmannsdottir@nibio.no
Place
Tromsø
Visiting address
Holtvegen 66, 9016 Tromsø
Authors
Nora Røhnebæk Aasen Sybil A. Herrera-Foessel Silius Mortensønn Vandeskog Therése Bengtsson Mulatu G. Dida Isak Drozdik Sigridur Dalmannsdottir Egill Gautason Jaroslaw S. Grodek Hrannar S. Hilmarsson Merja Högnäsbacka Ortrud Jäck Janne Kaseva Antti Laine Alex Lenkoski Morten Lillemo Min Lin Anne Marthe Lundby Shirin Mohammadi Per Jarle Møllerhagen Markku Niskanen Rodomiro Ortiz Maxie Skalshøi Anna G. Þórðardóttir Maria ThorkildsenAbstract
Climate change will substantially impact agriculture, requiring the development of new crop cultivars adapted for resilience to future stresses. Developing a new crop cultivar is a decades-long process. Therefore climate change considerations must already be incorporated into breeding programs. National breeding programs have typically involved field trials in a single country, which has functioned satisfactorily during periods of stable climate variability. However, it is widely acknowledged that when field trial information across borders is made available, it can significantly aid plant breeding programs. This paper presents a pan-Nordic multi-environment dataset that consolidates national trial data and data from VCU (Value for Cultivation and Use) trials for spring barley, red clover, and potato, during 1970–2024. The dataset harmonizes information on yield across diverse environments, enabling comparative analyses and cross-regional assessments. By providing a unified resource for the Nordic region, this dataset supports the development of more resilient crop varieties and facilitates data-driven breeding strategies under changing climatic conditions.
Abstract
In Norway, agroclimatic zones (ACZs) are a valuable tool for national analyses in subject areas concerning the optimized management of agricultural land resources. However, current Norwegian ACZs have been criticized for having an outdated standard climate normal (1931–1960), a limited representation of the local climatic variation, a lack of important model parameters, and weak methodological documentation. Therefore, this paper presents new ACZs for Norway that address these weaknesses. The most significant methodological updates are the use of the standard climate normal of 1991–2020, additional weather data variables, the downscaling of weather data to 250 m hexagons, and the incorporation of phenological crop models for spring wheat, spring barley, and forage grass. The grass model was calibrated with the number of grass harvests at research stations, while the grain models were calibrated with subsidy claim data. The modeled zones for the three crops were combined into the general ACZs. Example maps of the crop zones and new ACZs for the selected regions and the whole country are presented. The new ACZs are more robust, agronomically relevant, and better aligned with the current climatic conditions in Norway. The deliberate exclusion of factors other than climate ensures the new ACZs’ national comparability and their applicability in policy development, land-use planning, climate adaptation, and agronomic assessments at the national scale.
Authors
Akhil Reddy Pashapu Sigridur Dalmannsdottir Marit Jørgensen Mallikarjuna Rao Kovi Odd Arne RognliAbstract
Timothy is the most important perennial forage grass species in northern Norway, a region that is predicted to experience variable winter weather conditions due to climate change. Knowledge about how timothy cultivars respond to a changing climate is crucial for safeguarding forage production at higher latitudes. In the current study, we investigated changes in gene expression under freezing and ice encasement stresses and SNP allele frequencies between temporal populations (seed generations) of the two northern-adapted timothy cultivars Engmo and Noreng. In general, there was a decrease in freezing tolerance (defined as LT 50 , the temperature lethal to 50% of the population) and an increase in ice encasement tolerance (defined as LD 50 , the duration lethal to 50% of the population) over time. Comparative transcriptome analyses identified several genes known to be involved in stress responses, such as ethylene-responsive transcription factors, dehydration-responsive element binding transcription factors, reversion to ethylene sensitivity 1, and abscisic acid repressor 1, as differentially expressed between the temporal populations of Noreng under freezing stress. Several loci with large allele frequency changes were observed to be in close proximity to the genes displaying patterns resembling shifts over time in Noreng. Very few gene expression differences between populations of both cultivars under ice encasement stress could be due to weak selection pressure during seed multiplication. There was a gradual decline in genetic diversity in populations of both cultivars over time. The results indicate that phytohormone-mediated transcriptional regulation might be one of the key mechanisms for adaptation to changing winter weather conditions at higher latitudes. These findings underscore the importance of monitoring genetic shifts during seed multiplication to maintain cultivar stability and suggest that the identified stress-responsive genes could serve as valuable targets for breeding climate-resilient forage crops.