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Ecological and evolutionary approaches to improving crop variety mixtures

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 5, pages 1068–1077 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Variety mixtures can provide a range of benefits for both the crop and the environment. Their utility for the suppression of pathogens, especially in small grain crops, is well established and has seen some remarkable successes. However, despite decades of academic interest in the topic, commercial efforts to develop, release and promote variety mixtures remain peripheral to normal breeding activities. Here we argue that this is because simple but general design principles that allow for the optimization of multiple mixture benefits are currently lacking. We therefore review the practical and conceptual challenges inherent in the development of variety mixtures, and discuss common approaches to overcome these. We further consider three domains in which they might be particularly beneficial: pathogen resistance, yield stability and yield enhancement. We demonstrate that combining evolutionary and ecological concepts with data typically available from breeding and variety testing programmes could make mixture development easier and more economic. Identifying synergies between the breeding for monocultures and mixtures may even be key to the widespread adoption of mixtures—to the profit of breeders, farmers and society as a whole.

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Fig. 1: Effective ways to assemble variety mixtures.
Fig. 2: Selection through competition is a major unsolved challenge in evolutionary breeding.
Fig. 3: Re-partitioning the problem of combining multiple disease resistances.
Fig. 4: Asynchrony between components increases the stability of mixtures.
Fig. 5: Niche complementarity and overyielding in variety mixtures.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by Agroscope (to S.E.W. and R.P.) and the University of Zurich Priority Program ‘Global Change and Biodiversity’ (to P.A.N.). We thank D. Fossati and F. Mascher (Agroscope), B. McDonald and U. Merz (both ETH Zurich) for insightful comments on breeding and mixture development. We are grateful to C. Wüst-Galley, B. McDonald, G. Montazeaud (University of Lausanne) and R. Kristoffersen (Corteva Agriscience) for reading and commenting on the manuscript.

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  1. Group Breeding Research, Division Plant Breeding, Agroscope, Wädenswil, Switzerland

    Samuel E. Wuest

  2. Division Plant Breeding, Agroscope, Zurich, Switzerland

    Roland Peter

  3. Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies & Zurich-Basel Plant Science Center, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Pascal A. Niklaus

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  1. Samuel E. Wuest
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  2. Roland Peter
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S.E.W. and P.A.N. conceived the paper with input from R.P. S.E.W. performed the analyses and made the figures. All authors wrote and edited the final manuscript.

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Wuest, S.E., Peter, R. & Niklaus, P.A. Ecological and evolutionary approaches to improving crop variety mixtures. Nat Ecol Evol 5, 1068–1077 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-021-01497-x

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