Dissecting Wheat Grain Yield Drivers in a Mapping Population in the UK

Abstract

Improving crop yields arises as a solution to ensure food security in the future scenarios of a growing world population, changes in food consumption patterns, climate change, and limitations on resources allocated to agriculture. Defining traits that can be reliable cornerstones to yield improvement and understanding of their interaction and influence on yield formation is an important part of ensuring the success of breeding programs for high yields. Traits that can drive yield increases, such as light interception and conversion efficiency, as well as carbon assimilation and allocation, were intensively phenotyped in a double-haploid wheat mapping population grown under field conditions in the UK. Traits were analysed for their correlation to yield, genetic variation, and broad-sense heritability. Canopy cover and reflectance, biomass production, and allocation to stems and leaves, as well as flag leaf photosynthesis at a range of light levels measured pre-and post-anthesis correlated with plant productivity and contributed to explaining different strategies of wheat lines to attain high grain yields. This research mapped multiple traits related to light conversion into biomass. The findings highlight the need to phenotype traits throughout the growing season and support the approach of targeting photosynthesis and its components as traits for breeding high yielding wheat.

Assessing yield gap in high productive countries by designing wheat ideotypes

“…This could be explained by our assumptions about optimum agronomic management practices for effectively meeting N demand and achieving effective biological controls for any weed, disease and pest infestations, factors that generally reduce farmers’ as well as the national yields. However, mean current wheat yields of the present study are close to good year wheat yields (8–14 t ha −1 ) as reported by various studies across the UK and NZ 42,59,61,63,64 . Management optimal wheat yield potentials had been estimated and reported in the range of 7–13 t ha −1 in the north-western Europe including the UK mainly due to favourable climatic conditions and adapted local cultivars 15,19 .…”

“…Higher mean annual precipitation in NZ (40%) than the UK could also be other reason of high yield potential in NZ, particularly under water limited condition for I W . The greater yield potential and field grain yields of winter wheat in NZ than in the UK have been reported by various studies 17,42,59–61 .…”

Carbon Isotope Composition and the NDVI as Phenotyping Approaches for Drought Adaptation in Durum Wheat: Beyond Trait Selection

“…Therefore, accessions undergoing NDVI or δ 13 C assessment should have similar phenology, otherwise the phenotypic performance of these traits may be biased. Our results concur with a recent report on wheat [69] that advocates the phenotyping of photosynthetic traits at multiple scales (leaf to canopy) and multiple development stages (vegetative, and pre-and post-anthesis). Additionally, our study highlights the confounding effect of phenology when phenotyping other agronomic traits, a well-known issue when interpreting the effects of QTL for drought-related proxies of biomass and yield productivity [47,70].…”

Contrasting Impacts of Long-Term Application of Biofertilizers and Organic Manure on Grain Yield of Winter Wheat in North China Plain

“…The increases in grain yield of low chemical fertilizers substitute rates treatments might be due to the positive effects of organic manure and biofertilizers on wheat plants. As previously reported, organic manure amendment had the advantages of slowly releasing nutrients and preventing losses due to leaching [39,40] while biofertilizers could produce vitamins and substances that were beneficial to root development [32,41], which can promote wheat plants to absorb more nutrients.…”