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Functional–Structural Plant Modeling Highlights How Diversity in Leaf Dimensions and Tillering Capability Could Promote the Efficiency of Wheat Cultivar Mixtures

ABSTRACT: Increasing the cultivated diversity has been identified as a major leverage for the agroecological transition as it can help improve the resilience of low input cropping systems. For wheat, which is the most cultivated crop worldwide in terms of harvested area, the use of cultivar mixtures is spreading in several countries, but studies have seldom focused on establishing mixing rules based on plant architecture. Yet, the aerial architecture of plants and the overall canopy structure are critical for field performance as they greatly influence light interception, plant interactions and yield. The very high number of trait combinations in wheat mixtures makes it difficult to conduct experimentations on this issue, which is why a modeling approach appears to be an appropriate solution. In this study, we used WALTer, a functional structural plant model (FSPM), to simulate wheat cultivar mixtures and try to better understand how differences between cultivars in key traits of the aerial architecture influence mixture performance. We simulated balanced binary mixtures of cultivars differing for different critical plant traits: final height, leaf dimensions, leaf insertion angle and tillering capability. Our study highlights the impact of the leaf dimensions and the tillering capability on the performance of the simulated mixtures, which suggests that traits impacting the plants' leaf area index (LAI) have more influence on the performance of the stand than traits impacting the arrangement of the leaves. Our results show that the performance of mixtures is very variable depending on the values of the explored architectural traits. In particular, the best performances were achieved by mixing cultivars with different leaf dimensions and different tillering capability, which is in agreement with numerous studies linking the diversity of functional traits in plant communities to their productivity. However, some of the worst performances were also achieved by mixing varieties differing in their aerial architecture, which suggests that diversity is not a sufficient criterion to design efficient mixtures. Overall, these results highlight the importance of simulation-based explorations for establishing assembly rules to design efficient mixtures.

SUBMITTER: Blanc E

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8511389 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:The duration of pre-anthesis developmental phases is of interest in breeding for improved adaptation and yield potential in temperate cereals. Yet despite numerous studies on the genetic control of anthesis (flowering) time and floral initiation, little is known about the genetic control of other pre-anthesis phases. Furthermore, little is known about the effect that changes in the duration of pre-anthesis phases could have on traits related to leaf appearance and tillering, or dry matter accumulation before terminal spikelet initiation (TS). The genetic control of the leaf and spikelet initiation phase (LS; from sowing to TS), the stem elongation phase (SE; from TS to anthesis), and, within the latter, from TS to flag leaf appearance and from then to anthesis, was studied in two doubled-haploid, mapping bread wheat populations, Cranbrook × Halberd and CD87 × Katepwa, in two field experiments (ACT and NSW, Australia). The lengths of phases were estimated from measurements of both TS and the onset of stem elongation. Dry weight per plant before TS, rate of leaf appearance, tillering rate, maximum number of tillers and number of leaves, and dry weight per plant at TS were also estimated in the Cranbrook × Halberd population. More genomic regions were identified for the length of the different pre-anthesis phases than for total time to anthesis. Although overall genetic correlations between LS and SE were significant and positive, independent genetic variability between LS and SE, and several quantitative trait loci (QTLs) with different effects on both phases were found in the two populations. Several of these QTLs (which did not seem to coincide with reported major genes) could be of interest for breeding purposes since they were only significant for either LS or SE. There was no relationship between LS and the rate of leaf appearance. LS was strongly and positively correlated with dry weight at TS but only slightly negatively correlated with early vigour (dry weight before TS). Despite significant genetic correlations between LS and some tillering traits, shortening LS so as to lengthen SE without modifying total time to anthesis would not necessarily reduce tillering capacity, as QTLs for tillering traits did not coincide with those QTLs significant only for LS or SE. Therefore, the study of different pre-anthesis phases is relevant for a better understanding of genetic factors regulating developmental time and may offer new tools for fine-tuning it in breeding for both adaptability and yield potential.

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Functional–Structural Plant Modeling Highlights How Diversity in Leaf Dimensions and Tillering Capability Could Promote the Efficiency of Wheat Cultivar Mixtures

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