Biomass Allocation Responses to Root Interactions in Wheat Cultivars Support Predictions of Crop Evolutionary Ecology Theory.

ABSTRACT: The goal of agriculture is to optimize the population yield, but natural selection has produced active competition among plants, which decreases population performance. Therefore, cultivar breeding should be based on group selection, increasing yield by weakening individual competitive responses. We hypothesize that this has occurred inadvertently to some degree, so modern cultivars have weakened competitive traits and responses, such as reduced root proliferation in response to neighboring roots. We conducted a field experiment with eight cultivars of spring wheat that have been released over the last hundred years, which we grew at two densities. Two contrasting wheat cultivars, a landrace and a modern cultivar, were used in a second field experiment on competition within and between the

SUBMITTER: Zhu YH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8984106 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature