Influenced by human activities,global climate warming has become an increasingly serious issue.The continuously increasing earth surface temperature has a far-reaching impact on rice production.This review addresses the effects of climate warming on rice cultivation regions and yield,the effects of high temperature damage on rice growth and development,and the progress on genetic improvement of heat tolerance in rice.Climate warming increased the active accumulated temperature of rice growth,extended the rice growth season,and constantly expanded the rice cultivation regions northward,which was conducive to the increase of rice cultivation area.Furthermore,climate warming also resulted in the frequent occurrence of high temperature stress in rice.At booting stage and flowering stage,high temperature stress would cause serious physiological damages to rice and reduce spikelet fertility; at filling stage,high temperature stress would lead to poor grain plumpness and decline rice yield and quality.Based on high temperature screening,a number of heat-tolerant rice germplasms had been identified,and dozens of QTLs controlling rice heat-tolerance were also identified.Planting heat-tolerant rice varieties is one of the most effective ways of alleviating heat damages on rice.Heat-tolerant rice germplasms can be adopted as parents for the breeding of heat-tolerant rice combining with the proper methods of high-temperature screening,identification and breeding.
