Physiological trait networks enhance understanding of crop growth and water use in contrasting environments

Abstract

Plant function arises from a complex network of structural and physiological traits. Explicit representation of these traits, as well as their connections with other biophysical processes, is required to advance our understanding of plant-soil-climate interactions. We used the Terrestrial Regional Ecosystem Exchange Simulator (TREES) to evaluate physiological trait networks in maize. Net primary productivity (NPP) and grain yield were simulated across five contrasting climate scenarios. Simulations achieving high NPP and grain yield in high precipitation environments featured trait networks conferring high water use strategies: deep roots, high stomatal conductance at low water potential (risky stomatal regulation), high xylem hydraulic conductivity, and high maximal leaf area index. In contrast, high NPP and grain yield was achieved in dry environments with low late-season precipitation via water conserving trait networks: deep roots, high embolism resistance, and low stomatal conductance at low leaf water potential (conservative stomatal regulation). We suggest that our approach, which allows for the simultaneous evaluation of physiological traits and their interactions (i.e., networks), has potential to improve crop growth predictions in different environments. In contrast, evaluating single traits in isolation of other coordinated traits does not appear to be an effective strategy for predicting plant performance.

Resilience of soybean cultivars to drought stress during flowering and early-seed setting stages

“…Furthermore, different cultivars had different yield and quality characteristics, www.nature.com/scientificreports/ making it challenging to select one cultivar with high yield and quality. These results suggest a need to choose a network of structural and functional traits to improve stress tolerance in crops 66 .…”

Plant Breeding in the face of climate change

“…The research conducted over two decades in maize in the U.S. (Messina et al 2020; Cooper & Messina, 2023) is informative to consider what the scientific community and breeders working in other crops and geographies can expect. Our research studying how predictive skill differentials between pure statistical approaches compared with those augmented by dynamical models (Diepenbrock et al 2022), and how trait networks and trait interactions underpins the variance explained by these components (Messina et al 2020, Gleason et al 2022; Cooper & Messina 2023) indicates that CGM-WGP approaches can be expected to have an increasingly important role in breeding for the impacts of climate change. The exacerbation of climate extremes within the TPE, because of a changing climate (IPCC, 2021), will be conducive to increasing the distance between environment types encountered within the TPE.…”

“…CGMs are also useful tools to explore the relevance of traits and trait networks (Messina et al 2020; Ramirez Villegas et al, 2020; Gleason et al 2022), and genetic networks (Messina et al 2011; Powell et al 2022) on yield performance. Figure 4A shows the contribution of individual traits or trait networks (TxT) to the fraction of phenotypic variance.…”

“…There is evidence that wheat breeding may be falling into this trap as rankings of cultivars are changing with climate change (Morgounov et al 2013; Xiong et al 2021). Because the traits and trait network interactions underpinning adaptation (at least to drought) change with levels of evapotranspiration (Messina et al, 2011; Borrell et al 2014; Gleason et al, 2022; Cooper & Messina, 2023), the environmental distance between the current TPE and the future TPE could become significant drivers of G x E x M interactions. In wheat, increased spring maximum temperatures led to both increased and decreased yields (Morgounov et al 2013).…”

Drought response in Arabidopsis displays synergistic coordination between stems and leaves

“…The increasing intensity and frequency of drought episodes are becoming major threats to current and future agricultural productivity around the globe. Even the countries that had not experienced drought stress during the last decades are now impacted by drought ( Corso et al , 2020 ; Gleason et al , 2022 ). One of the major problems that plants experience when they are facing severe drought is that detrimental levels of drought-induced gas bubbles (embolisms) in the xylem sap generate massive obstruction of the root to shoot water transport ( Sperry and Tyree, 1988 ; Tyree and Zimmermann, 2002 ; Cochard, 2006 ; Choat et al , 2012 ; Venturas et al , 2017 ; Johnson et al , 2022 ), which happens after stomata are closed ( Martin-StPaul et al , 2017 ).…”