Wheat responses to combined drought, heat, and elevated CO2: integrative morpho-physiological and transcriptomic insights under future climate scenarios

Climate change is anticipated to exacerbate environmental stressors such as drought, elevated temperatures, and increased CO2 levels, posing a significant threat to crop productivity. We investigated the morpho-physiological acclimation and transcriptional responses of hexaploid wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) under both single and combined stress conditions. Wheat plants were subjected to drought (D), elevated temperature (eT), and elevated CO2 (eC) individually, as well as in double (eT+D, eC+D, eC+eT) and triple (eC+eT+D) stress combinations. Our findings reveal that the eT+D combination resulted in the most severe reductions in growth and yield, while elevated CO2 cccccpartially mitigated these effects by enhancing biomass production and water-use efficiency. Transcriptomic analyses identified key regulatory networks, including specific protein-coding genes, transcription factor (TF) families, and potential marker genes associated with stress adaptation. Overall, this study provides new insights into the complex genetic and physiological mechanisms underlying wheat resilience to multifactorial environmental stress. These findings highlight valuable molecular targets for breeding strategies aimed at improving wheat tolerance to climate change-induced stress conditions RNAseq data from winter bread wheat Alana. Plants were grown under different regimes: D - drought, T - elevated temperature (up to 31°C), C - elevated CO2 concentration (700 ppm) and their mutual combinations: C+T, T+D, C+D, C+T+D. Samples were collected from the 3rd and 4th leaf on the main tiller at the stage GS61.