Effects of inter-varietal diversity, biotic stresses and environmental productivity on grain yield of spring barley variety mixtures

Kiær, Lars Pødenphant; Skovgaard, Ib M.; Østergård, Hanne

doi:10.1007/s10681-012-0640-1

Cited by 49 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…This suggests that crops or varieties with high tillering abilities such as most wheat varieties could benefit more from mixtures of varieties than crops that have a much lower ability for tillering such as maize. Finally, results obtained on barley have already shown that mixing varieties may stabilize production through a better adaptation to environmental variability (Kiaer et al 2012).…”

Section: Potential Sampling Effects In Mixtures Of Varietiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Designing mixtures of varieties for multifunctional agriculture with the help of ecology. A review

Barot

Allard

Cantarel

et al. 2017

Agron. Sustain. Dev.

205

174

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The study of natural ecosystems and experiments using mixtures of plant species demonstrates that both species and genetic diversity generally promote ecosystem functioning. Therefore, mixing crop varieties is a promising alternative practice to transform modern high-input agriculture that is associated with a drastic reduction of within-field crop genetic diversity and is widely recognized as unsustainable. Here, we review the effects of mixtures of varieties on ecosystem functioning, and their underlying ecological mechanisms, as studied in ecology and agronomy, and outline how this knowledge can help designing more efficient mixtures. We recommend the development of two complementary strategies to optimize variety mixtures by fostering the ecological mechanisms leading to a positive relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning and its stability through time, i.e., sampling and complementarity effects. (1) In the "trait-blind" approach, the design of high-performance mixtures is based on estimations of the mixing abilities of varieties. While this approach is operational because it does not require detailed trait knowledge, it relies on heavy experimental designs to evaluate mixing ability. (2) The trait-based approach is particularly efficient to design mixtures of varieties to provide particular baskets of services but requires building databases of traits for crop varieties and documenting the relations between traits and services. The performance of mixtures requires eventually to be evaluated in real economic, social, and agronomic contexts. We conclude that the need of a multifunctional low-input agriculture strongly increases the attractiveness of mixtures but that new breeding approaches are required to create varieties with higher mixing abilities, to foster complementarity and selection effects through an increase in the variance of relevant traits and to explore new combinations of trait values

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Section: Potential Sampling Effects In Mixtures Of Varietiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Designing mixtures of varieties for multifunctional agriculture with the help of ecology. A review

Barot

Allard

Cantarel

et al. 2017

Agron. Sustain. Dev.

205

174

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…For example, although variation between sites in crop performance is often much greater than variation between cultivars within a site, diverse crop stands comprising several cultivars have not only a similar range of variability within a site but also less variability between sites (Swanston et al . ; Kiær, Skovgaard & Østergard ).…”

Section: Crop Genetic Diversity and Indirect Facilitationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Facilitation and sustainable agriculture: a mechanistic approach to reconciling crop production and conservation

et al. 2015

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Summary1. Food security is currently considered a major global problem. However, increasing intensity of food production in agricultural systems has driven reductions in farmland biodiversity. A major challenge is to enable biodiversity conservation whilst addressing the problem of food security. 2. Here we describe how facilitative plant-plant interactions in crop systems could be used to help strike this balance. An obvious example is that of intercropping systems, where combinations of crop species can -under some circumstances -deliver reduced inputs of agrochemicals (fertilizers, pesticides) per unit yield, with potential knock-on benefits for biodiversity conservation. 3. Other facilitative processes can also play a role in biodiversity conservation. Increased intraspecific crop genetic diversity can help protect crops from pests and diseases. Although overlooked in facilitation research, we argue that the mechanisms operate in a manner which is directly analogous to associational defence against herbivores, a process well recognized in the facilitation literature. As with intercropping, the benefits to nature conservation arise from reduced pesticide use per unit harvested crop. 4. Crops may have facilitative effects on some arable weed species, particularly those that are currently considered rare in intensive farming systems. Work is in its early stages to understand the underlying mechanisms, but it appears that crops might create niche space to which some weed species are adapted. Increasing plant species diversity through niche space creation may then have cascading benefits for other components of farmland biodiversity. 5. Our new understanding of facilitative processes arising from work on crop systems has lessons for the study of facilitative interactions in natural and semi-natural communities. We argue that, although easier to identify and quantify in crop systems, some of these facilitative processes have to date been overlooked in studies of non-crop systems and certainly deserve further consideration. 6. Finally, we discuss what steps may be needed to move from our understanding of the role of facilitation to the development of new agricultural practice. In some cases the challenge may be one of the encouraging uptake of existing practices, and in others more research is needed to understand how new ecological understanding might deliver more sustainable agricultural practice.

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“…The degree of weed interference on the crops depends on the time of weed infestation, on the environment and on characteristics of the weed species (Kiaer et al 2012;Hugo et al 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Morning glory species interference on the development and yield of soybeans

et al. 2017

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Effects of inter-varietal diversity, biotic stresses and environmental productivity on grain yield of spring barley variety mixtures

Cited by 49 publications

References 46 publications

Designing mixtures of varieties for multifunctional agriculture with the help of ecology. A review

Designing mixtures of varieties for multifunctional agriculture with the help of ecology. A review

Facilitation and sustainable agriculture: a mechanistic approach to reconciling crop production and conservation

Morning glory species interference on the development and yield of soybeans

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