Climate change will place agro-ecological systems and food security at serious risk. At the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) in Paris in December of 2015, parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) reached a historic agreement (Paris Agreement) to combat climate change and to accelerate and intensify the actions and investments needed for a sustainable low carbon future. An initiative named the “4‰ initiative: Soils for food security and climate” was proposed by the French Minister of Agriculture, and this initiative was launched officially at the COP21 and adopted by many global organizations. The aim of this initiative was to increase carbon sequestration in soil to mitigate fossil fuel combustion emissions of greenhouse gasses. The present study found that China has high CO₂ emissions but a low soil carbon pool, and indicates that 4‰ increments of the soil carbon pool will not be sufficient to offset national CO₂ emissions. The current soil carbon sequestration rate would also not reach the mean level requested by the initiative. Therefore, China faces big challenges to achieve this initiative. An integrated use of straw technology may be used more widely to improve carbon sequestration, and other opportunities include improved fertilizer use efficiency and greenhouse gas mitigation through the waste management project under construction in China. This paper suggests that China may put forward the biomass treatment centered high yield and fertilizer-carbon sequestration project to enhance resilience of agro-ecosystems to climate change.

Understanding the potential drought characteristics under climate change is essential to reduce vulnerability and establish adaptation strategies, especially in the Huang-Huai-Hai Plain (3H Plain), which is a major grain production area in China.  In this paper, we investigated the variations in drought characteristics (drought event frequency, duration, severity, and intensity) for the past 50 years (1961–2010) and under future scenarios (2010–2099), based on the observed meteorological data and the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5 scenario, respectively.  First, we compared the applicability of three climatic drought indices: the standardized precipitation index (SPI), the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index based on the Penman-Monteith equation (SPEI-PM) and the same index based on the Thornthwaite equation (SPEI-TH) to correlate the recorded agricultural drought areas.  Then, we analyzed the drought characteristics using ‘run theory’ for both historical and the future RCP 8.5 scenario based on the best performing index.  Correlation analyses between drought indices and agricultural drought areas showed that SPEI-PM performed better than SPI and SPEI-TH in the 3H Plain.  Based on the results of SPEI-PM, drought risks including duration, severity and intensity during 1961–2010 showed an decreasing trend.  However, under the RCP 8.5 scenario, drought is expected to rise in frequency, duration, severity, and intensity from 2010–2099, although drought components during the 2010–2039 are predicted to be milder compared with historical conditions.  This study highlights that the estimations for atmospheric evaporative demand would create differences in the prediction of long-term drought trends by different drought indices.  The results of this study can help inform researchers and local policy makers to establish drought management strategies.

Crop consumptive water use is recognized as a key element to understand regional water management performance. This study documents an attempt to apply a regional evapotranspiration model (SEBAL) and crop information for assessment of regional crop (summer maize and winter wheat) actual evapotranspiration (ETa) in Huang-Huai-Hai (3H) Plain, China. The average seasonal ETa of summer maize and winter wheat were 354.8 and 521.5 mm respectively in 3H Plain. A high-ETa belt of summer maize occurs in piedmont plain, while a low ETa area was found in the hill-irrigable land and dry land area. For winter wheat, a high-ETa area was located in the middle part of 3H Plain, including low plain-hydropenia irrigable land and dry land, hill-irrigable land and dry land, and basin-irrigable land and dry land. Spatial analysis demonstrated a linear relationship between crop ETa, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), and the land surface temperature (LST). A stronger relationship between ETa and NDVI was found in the metaphase and last phase than other crop growing phase, as indicated by higher correlation coefficient values. Additionally, higher correlation coefficients were detected between ETa and LST than that between ETa and NDVI, and this significant relationship ran through the entire crop growing season. ETa in the summer maize growing season showed a significant relationship with longitude, while ETa in the winter wheat growing season showed a significant relationship with latitude. The results of this study will serve as baseline information for water resources management of 3H Plain.

Type A spermatogonial stem cells are the only immortal diploid cells in the postnatal animal that undergo self-renewal through the lifetime of an animal and transmit genes to subsequent generations. In this paper, the generation and characterization of double-transgenic mice co-expressing the Escherichia coli appA gene and human MxA gene generated via the in vivo transfection of type A spermatogonial cells were reported for the first time. The dicistronic expression vector pcDNA-appA-MxA(AMP) and ExGen500 transfection reagent were injected into the testicular tissue of 7-d-old male ICR mice. The mice that underwent testismediated gene transfer were mated with wild-type female mice, and the integration and expression of the foreign genes in the offspring were evaluated. Transgenic mice that co-expressed appA and MxA showed a gene integration rate of 8.89% (16/180). The transgenic mice were environmentally friendly, as the amount of phosphorous remaining in the manure was reduced by as much as 11.1% by the appA gene (P<0.05); these animals also exhibited a strong anti-viral phenotype.

Climate has been changing in the last fifty years in China and will continue to change regardless any efforts for mitigation. Agriculture is a climate-dependent activity and highly sensitive to climate changes and climate variability. Understanding the interactions between climate change and agricultural production is essential for society stable development of China. The first mission is to fully understand how to predict future climate and link it with agriculture production system. In this paper, recent studies both domestic and international are reviewed in order to provide an overall image of the progress in climate change researches. The methods for climate change scenarios construction are introduced. The pivotal techniques linking crop model and climate models are systematically assessed and climate change impacts on Chinese crops yield among model results are summarized. The study found that simulated productions of grain crop inherit uncertainty from using different climate models, emission scenarios and the crops simulation models. Moreover, studies have different spatial resolutions, and methods for general circulation model (GCM) downscaling which increase the uncertainty for regional impacts assessment. However, the magnitude of change in crop production due to climate change (at 700 ppm CO2 eq correct) appears within ±10% for China in these assessments. In most literatures, the three cereal crop yields showed decline under climate change scenarios and only wheat in some region showed increase. Finally, the paper points out several gaps in current researches which need more studies to shorten the distance for objective recognizing the impacts of climate change on crops. The uncertainty for crop yield projection is associated with climate change scenarios, CO2 fertilization effects and adaptation options. Therefore, more studies on the fields such as free air CO2 enrichment experiment and practical adaptations implemented need to be carried out.

Climate change will have important implications in water shore regions, such as Huang-Huai-Hai (3H) plain, where expected warmer and drier conditions might augment crop water demand. Sensitivity analysis is important in understanding the relative importance of climatic variables to the variation in reference evapotranspiration (ET0). In this study, the 51-yr ET0 during winter wheat and summer maize growing season were calculated from a data set of daily climate variables in 40 meteorological stations. Sensitivity maps for key climate variables were estimated according to Kriging method and the spatial pattern of sensitivity coefficients for these key variables was plotted. In addition, the slopes of the linear regression lines for sensitivity coefficients were obtained. Results showed that ET0 during winter wheat growing season accounted for the largest proportion of annual ET0, due to its long phenological days, while ET0 was detected to decrease significantly with the magnitude of 0.5 mm yr-1 in summer maize growing season. Solar radiation is considered to be the most sensitive and primarily controlling variable for negative trend in ET0 for summer maize season, and higher sensitive coefficient value of ET0 to solar radiation and temperature were detected in east part and southwest part of 3H plain respectively. Relative humidity was demonstrated as the most sensitive factor for ET0 in winter wheat growing season and declining relativity humidity also primarily controlled a negative trend in ET0, furthermore the sensitivity coefficient to relative humidity increased from west to southeast. The eight sensitivity centrals were all found located in Shandong Province. These ET0 along with its sensitivity maps under winter wheat-summer maize rotation system can be applied to predict the agricultural water demand and will assist water resources planning and management for this region.