In an era of growing environmental, socioeconomic, and market uncertainties, understanding the adaptive strategies of smallholder farmers is paramount for sustainable agricultural productivity and environmental management efforts. We adopted a mixed-methods approach to investigate the adaptive strategies of smallholders in Northwest Cambodia. Our methodology included downscaled climate projections to project future climate conditions and scenarios, household surveys to collect detailed demographic and socioeconomic data, crop monitoring and record-keeping to gather data on productivity and profitability, and semi-structured interviews to obtain qualitative insights on constraints and adaptation. Our analyses revealed that all smallholders are increasingly vulnerable to climate change which projections reveal will result in more intense and extreme weather events. Specifically, 92% of respondents reported reductions in household income, and 63% indicated the necessity to cut household expenses, which negatively affect agricultural productivity, as evidenced by 33% of respondents reporting declining crop yields and 10% experiencing food shortages. We also uncovered significant differences in farming strategies to mitigate vulnerability among distinct household clusters. Some households prioritise maximising yields through high-expense production strategies, while others focus on optimising inputs to enhance profit-margins, indirectly minimising their environmental impact. These varying strategies have different implications for poverty, food security, and the environment, but were doing very little to mitigate overall vulnerability. To enhance the adaptive capacity of smallholders, policies should target interventions that balance economic growth with environmental sustainability, tailored to the specific needs of different farmer and household types. Promoting the adoption of climate-resilient agricultural practices, investing in water management infrastructure, enhancing access to timely and accurate climate information, and implementing social protection measures are strongly recommended.

Increased levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and associated climatic variability is primarily responsible for inducing heat waves, flooding and drought stress. Among these, water scarcity is a major limitation to crop productivity. Water stress can severely reduce crop yield and both the severity and duration of the stress are critical. Water availability is a key driver for sustainable cotton production and its limitations can adversely affect physiological and biochemical processes of plants, leading towards lint yield reduction. Adaptation of crop husbandry techniques suitable for cotton crop requires a sound understanding of environmental factors, influencing cotton lint yield and fiber quality. Various defense mechanisms e.g. maintenance of membrane stability, carbon fixation rate, hormone regulation, generation of antioxidants and induction of stress proteins have been found play a vital role in plant survival under moisture stress. Plant molecular breeding plays a functional role to ascertain superior genes for important traits and can offer breeder ready markers for developing ideotypes. This review highlights drought-induced damage to cotton plants at structural, physiological and molecular levels. It also discusses the opportunities for increasing drought tolerance in cotton either through modern gene editing technology like clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR/Cas9), zinc finger nuclease, molecular breeding as well as through crop management, such as use of appropriate fertilization, growth regulator application and soil amendments.

High temperature during the reproductive stage in chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is a major cause of yield loss. The objective of this research was to determine whether that variation can be explained by differences in anther and pollen development under heat stress: the effect of high temperature during the pre- and post-anthesis periods on pollen viability, pollen germination in a medium, pollen germination on the stigma, pollen tube growth and pod set in a heat-tolerant (ICCV 92944) and a heat-sensitive (ICC 5912) genotype was studied. The plants were evaluated under heat stress and non-heat stress conditions in controlled environments. High temperature stress (29/16°C to 40/25°C) was gradually applied at flowering to study pollen viability and stigma receptivity including flower production, pod set and seed number. This was compared with a non-stress treatment (27/16°C). The high temperatures reduced pod set by reducing pollen viability and pollen production per flower. The ICCV 92944 pollen was viable at 35/20°C (41% fertile) and at 40/25°C (13% fertile), whereas ICC 5912 pollen was completely sterile at 35/20°C with no in vitro germination and no germination on the stigma. However, the stigma of ICC 5912 remained receptive at 35/20°C and non-stressed pollen (27/16°C) germinated on it during reciprocal crossing. These data indicate that pollen grains were more sensitive to high temperature than the stigma in chickpea. High temperature also reduced pollen production per flower, % pollen germination, pod set and seed number.

Global climate change has caused severe crop yield losses worldwide and is endangering food security in the future. The impact of climate change on food production is high in Australia and globally. Climate change is projected to have a negative impact on crop production. Chickpea is a cool season legume crop mostly grown on residual soil moisture. High temperature and terminal drought are common in different regions of chickpea production with varying intensities and frequencies. Therefore, stable chickpea production will depend on the release of new cultivars with improved adaptation to major events such as drought and high temperature. Recent progress in chickpea breeding has increased the efficiency of assessing genetic diversity in germplasm collections. This review provides an overview of the integration of new approaches and tools into breeding programs and their impact on the development of stress tolerance in chickpea.