Multi-environment field trials for wheat yield, stability and breeding progress in Germany.

Multi-environmental trials (MET) with temporal and spatial variance are crucial for understanding genotype-environment-management (GxExM) interactions in crops. Here, we present a MET dataset for winter wheat in Germany. The dataset encompasses MET spanning six years (2015-2020), six locations and nine crop management scenarios (consisting of combinations for three treatments, unbalanced in each location and year) comparing 228 cultivars released between 1963 and 2016, amounting to a total of 526,751 data points covering 24 traits.

Breeding progress of nitrogen use efficiency of cereal crops, winter oilseed rape and peas in long-term variety trials.

Grain yield and NUE increased over time while nitrogen yield did not drop significantly despite reduced nitrogen input. Selection for grain and nitrogen yield is equivalent to selection for NUE. Breeding and registration of improved varieties with high yield, processing quality, disease resistance and nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) are of utmost importance for sustainable crop production to minimize adverse environmental impact and contribute to food security.

Co-Evolution of Sink and Source in the Recent Breeding History of Winter Wheat in Germany.

Optimizing the interplay between sinks and sources is of crucial importance for breeding progress in winter wheat. However, the physiological limitations of yield from source (e.g.

Breeding improves wheat productivity under contrasting agrochemical input levels.

The world cropping area for wheat exceeds that of any other crop, and high grain yields in intensive wheat cropping systems are essential for global food security. Breeding has raised yields dramatically in high-input production systems; however, selection under optimal growth conditions is widely believed to diminish the adaptive capacity of cultivars to less optimal cropping environments. Here, we demonstrate, in a large-scale study spanning five decades of wheat breeding progress in western Europe, where grain yields are among the highest worldwide, that breeding for high performance in fact enhances cultivar performance not only under optimal production conditions but also in production systems with reduced agrochemical inputs.