Federated learning involves training statistical models in massive, heterogeneous networks. Naively minimizing an aggregate loss function in such a network may disproportionately advantage or disadvantage some of the devices. In this work, we propose q-Fair Federated Learning (q-FFL), a novel optimization objective inspired by resource allocation in wireless networks that encourages a more fair (i.e., lowervariance) accuracy distribution across devices in federated networks. To solve q-FFL, we devise a communication-efficient method, q-FedAvg, that is suited to federated networks. We validate both the effectiveness of q-FFL and the efficiency of q-FedAvg on a suite of federated datasets, and show that q-FFL (along with q-FedAvg) outperforms existing baselines in terms of the resulting fairness, flexibility, and efficiency.

Summary The role of abscisic acid (ABA) receptors, PYR1/PYL/RCAR (PYLs), is well established in ABA signalling and plant drought response, but limited research has explored the regulation of wheat PYLs in this process, especially the effects of their allelic variations on drought tolerance or grain yield. Here, we found that the overexpression of a TaABFs‐regulated PYL gene, TaPYL1‐1B , exhibited higher ABA sensitivity, photosynthetic capacity and water‐use efficiency (WUE), all contributed to higher drought tolerance than that of wild‐type plants. This heightened water‐saving mechanism further increased grain yield and protected productivity during water deficit. Candidate gene association analysis revealed that a favourable allele TaPYL1‐1B In‐442 , carrying an MYB recognition site insertion in the promoter, is targeted by TaMYB70 and confers enhanced expression of TaPYL1‐1B in drought‐tolerant genotypes. More importantly, an increase in frequency of the TaPYL1‐1B In‐442 allele over decades among modern Chinese cultivars and its association with high thousand‐kernel weight together demonstrated that it was artificially selected during wheat improvement efforts. Taken together, our findings illuminate the role of TaPYL1‐1B plays in coordinating drought tolerance and grain yield. In particular, the allelic variant TaPYL1‐1B In‐442 substantially contributes to enhanced drought tolerance while maintaining high yield, and thus represents a valuable genetic target for engineering drought‐tolerant wheat germplasm.

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