Can plants remember drought? Emerging evidence suggests that prior stress exposure leaves an epigenetic imprint, reprogramming plants for enhanced resilience. However, the stability and functional relevance of drought memory remain unresolved. This review synthesizes recent advances in epigenetic modifications, transcriptional reprogramming, and metabolic priming, critically assessing their roles in plant stress adaptation. DNA methylation dynamically reshapes chromatin landscapes, yet its transient nature questions its long-term inheritance. Histone modifications, particularly H3K9ac and H2Bub1, may encode stress signatures, enabling rapid transcriptional responses, whereas small RNAs fine-tune chromatin states to reinforce memory. Beyond epigenetics, physiological priming, including osmotic adjustments, antioxidant defenses, and hormonal crosstalk, introduces further complexity, yet its evolutionary advantage remains unclear. Root system plasticity may enhance drought resilience, but its metabolic trade-offs and epigenetic underpinnings are largely unexplored. A critical challenge is disentangling stable adaptive mechanisms from transient acclimatory shifts. We propose a framework for evaluating drought memory across temporal and generational scales and highlight the potential of precision genome editing to establish causality. By integrating multi-omics, gene editing, and field-based validation, this review aims to unlock the molecular blueprint of drought memory. Understanding these mechanisms is key to engineering climate-resilient crops, ensuring global food security in an era of increasing environmental uncertainty.
Tag: Climate-resilience
Willingness to pay for improved water supply services in Malawi’s small-scale irrigation schemes
Small-scale irrigation schemes are vital for enhancing the resilience of smallholder farmers in Malawi, where erratic rainfall threatens food security and livelihoods. This study, based on data from 352 farmers, assessed willingness to pay (WTP) for improved water supply services. The average WTP was USD 1.68 per plot annually, influenced by factors such as age, gender, distance to water sources, conservation practices, and market access. The findings underscore the need for differentiated pricing models and targeted training in soil and water conservation. These insights support the design of equitable, sustainable irrigation systems that strengthen climate resilience and rural development.
Agroforestry for sustainable livelihoods: role of geo-informatics, ICT, and citizen science
Agroforestry is an integrated land use system that combines trees, crops, and livestock, providing essential ecological and socioeconomic benefits that contribute to sustainable agriculture and climate resilience. This approach enhances biodiversity, improves soil structure and water management, supports livelihoods, and reduces market vulnerabilities. Recognized for its role in advancing sustainable development goals, agroforestry promotes carbon sequestration, food security, and ecosystem services, aligning with global restoration efforts such as the United Nations Decade of Restoration. In India, agroforestry practices are adapted to various agroclimatic zones, supplying approximately 70% of the country’s timber needs and significantly bolstering the rural economy. Recent technological advances in geo-informatics and data analytics have strengthened agroforestry implementation by enabling efficient monitoring, species mapping, and site suitability assessments. However, challenges such as data accessibility and integration persist, requiring investment in digital technologies and public-private partnerships to maximize agroforestry’s potential in sustainable development. This chapter explores the multifaceted benefits of agroforestry, the role of technological innovations in its expansion, and strategies to overcome implementation barriers, offering a comprehensive perspective for policymakers, researchers, and practitioners.
Climate-smart villages: An innovative solution for building resilience in the North and Far North regions of Cameroon
Cameroon’s Far North and North regions are bearing the brunt of the increasing effects of climate variability. Rising temperatures and erratic rainfall, prolonged droughts during the farming season, and flash floods and violent winds are rendering rural communities more vulnerable. These climatic hazards greatly reduce agricultural productivity, causing crop losses and worsening the vulnerability of rural households. In the face of these challenges, actions are needed to strengthen the resilience of local communities and enable them to adapt to the increasing effects of climate change.
Do Digital Climate Services for Farmers Encourage Resilient Farming Practices? Pinpointing Gaps through the Responsible Research and Innovation Framework
Digital climate services can support agricultural management decisions under uncertain climatological conditions and may contribute to achieving the ambitions of the fourth agricultural revolution. However, do they encourage social and environmental aspects? Our analysis builds on the four dimensions of the Responsible Research and Innovation framework and evaluates, among other things, which production systems are promoted in climate service apps; how the services contribute to or challenge (inter)national targets for sustainable development, ecosystem restoration, and climate resilience. From a longlist of apps, we present the best documented ones as case studies: nine weather-based and two non-weather-based digital services. We target apps of relevance for Southeast Asian smallholder farming systems, where both supply of and demand for such apps have this far been limited in contrast to the access to phones, and where particularly the supply of apps is poorly documented. The key findings point out several gaps. First, digitalization in Southeast Asia’s farming system is driven by foreign investments, while partnerships with public agencies, in particular national Met Offices, were rare. Services were developed for farmers but not necessarily with farmers, thereby overlooking needs and social factors such as (digital) literacy and trust. While some of the weather-based apps included more than one crop, they primarily support single solutions and none of them targeted mixed or integrated farming systems. This calls for developers of digital climate services to innovate applications in an inclusive manner, and to support governments in achieving their commitments to global climate, biodiversity, and sustainability goals. Difficulties in generating comparable information about the reviewed apps regardless of the study’s geographical focus demonstrates a need for more transparent means and protocols for users to assess and compare digital climate services.
NBS Framework for Agricultural Landscapes
Entering the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, interventions referred to as nature-based solutions (NBS) are at the forefront of the sustainability discourse. While applied in urban, natural forest or wetland ecosystems, they are underutilized in agricultural landscapes. This paper presents a technical framework to characterise NBS in agricultural systems. NBS in the agriculture sector is proposed as “the use of natural processes or elements to improve ecosystem functions of environments and landscapes affected by agricultural practices, and to enhance livelihoods and other social and cultural functions, over various temporal and spatial scales.” The framework emerges from a review of 188 peer-reviewed articles on NBS and green infrastructure published between 2015 and 2019 and three international expert consultations organized in 2019–2020. The framework establishes four essential functions for NBS in agriculture: 1) Sustainable practices — with a focus on production; 2) Green Infrastructure — mainly for engineering purposes such as water and soil, and slope stabilization; 3) Amelioration — for restoration of conditions for plants, water, soil or air and climate change mitigation; and 4) Conservation — focusing on biodiversity and ecosystem connectivity. The framework connects the conventional divide between production and conservation to add functionality, purpose and scale in project design. The review confirmed limited evidence of NBS in agricultural systems particularly in developing country contexts, although specific technologies feature under other labels. Consultations indicated that wider adoption will require a phased approach to generate evidence, while integrating NBS in national and local policies and agricultural development strategies. The paper concludes with recommended actions required to facilitate such processes.