Cereal Performance and Senescence

The senescence of plant tissues or organs is the development process in plants that overlaps between the vegetative and reproductive stages. Premature induction of senescence under adverse environmental conditions may reduce crop yields. This chapter reviews the current literature on the effects of senescence on crop growth, development, and production. In order to increase productivity, many functional green varieties, especially sorghum and corn, have been selected through conventional breeding. In various studies, a positive interaction has been observed between leaf area elongation and production in terms of yield, whereas many green cultivars have no effect on productivity due to senescence. Maintenance of the green phenotype is also observed in many crops that are drought resistant and can grow under a limited nitrogen supply. The maintenance of green traits under abiotic stresses leads to an increase in biomass production and grain yield, but this has been reported in few crops. The maintenance of green traits under drought stress is only found in transgenic species. Moreover, grains of cereal crops have been found to be rich in the macromolecules of drugs, which could be extracted through molecular techniques for the development of an alternative usage of cereal crops to boost the economy of developing countries. The improvement in the maximum harvesting of solar radiation by the crop leaves could be due to the efficient conversion of solar radiation into glucose as a photosynthetic output which is supplied to the plant’s organs in the photosynthesis process. Further, in this review, the bases of photosynthesis for the maximum yield of major cereal crops are discussed. It is concluded that the genetic and chemical manipulation of solar light interception and zoning throughout the crop cycle provides the greatest potential for attaining high yield. And for high yield potential, the high distribution of photosynthetic compounds to harvest organs has always been most important.