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

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.

Genotypic diversity and plasticity of root system architecture to nitrogen availability in oilseed rape.

In the emerging new agricultural context, a drastic reduction in fertilizer usage is required. A promising way to maintain high crop yields while reducing fertilizer inputs is to breed new varieties with optimized root system architecture (RSA), designed to reach soil resources more efficiently. This relies on identifying key traits that underlie genotypic variability and plasticity of RSA in response to nutrient availability.

WALTer: a three-dimensional wheat model to study competition for light through the prediction of tillering dynamics.

Background And Aims: Branching is a main morphogenetic process involved in the adaptation of plants to the environment. In grasses, tillering is divided into three phases: tiller emergence, cessation of tillering and tiller regression. Understanding and prediction of the tillering process is a major challenge to better control cereal yields.