Climate change impacts on seed production and quality: current knowledge, implications, and mitigation strategies

Climate change is real and inevitable, incessantly threatening the terrestrial ecosystem and global food security. Although the impacts of climate change on crop yield and the environment have received much attention in recent years, there are few studies on its implications for the production of high-quality seeds that provide the basic input for food production. Seeds are the primary planting material for crop cultivation and carry most new agricultural technologies to the field. Climatic abnormalities occurring at harvest and during the post-harvest stages may not always severely impact seed yield but can reduce the morphological, physiological and biochemical quality, ultimately reducing the field performance and planting value of the seed lot. In our preliminary data mining that considered the first 30 species appearing in the search results, seed setting, seed yield and seed quality parameters under temperature, CO2 and drought stresses showed differential response patterns depending on the cotyledon number (monocots vs. dicots), breeding system (self-vs. cross-pollinated), life cycle (annual vs. perennial) and maturity time (seed setting in cooler vs. hotter months). The relative proportions of the 30 species showed that germination and seedling vigour are adversely affected more in dicots and self-pollinated annual species that set seeds in hotter months. Together, these impacts can potentially reduce the quantity and quality of seeds produced. Immediate attention and action are required to understand and mitigate the detrimental impacts of climate change on the production and supply of high-quality seeds. This review summarises the current knowledge on this aspect, predicts the future implications and suggests some potential mitigation strategies in the context of projected population growth, climate change and seed requirement at the global level.