Mixing things up! Identifying early diversity benefits and facilitating the development of improved variety mixtures with high throughput field phenotyping

Abstract

Abstract Crop diversification is a potential strategy to increase the stability and productivity of crops, while reducing pathogen pressures and pesticide requirements. Crop variety mixtures provide some of these diversification benefits and their cultivation is fully compatible with current mechanized agronomic practices. However, the development of optimal variety mixtures is a long, labour‐intense process requiring extensive field trials. High throughput field phenotyping (HTFP) methods provide promising applications in field testing because they allow for precise, repeatable, and rapid measurements of crop properties. Here, we evaluated the use of HTFP for developing high‐performing oat (Avena sativa) variety mixtures by testing its suitability to predict diversity yield benefits from repeated canopy measurements across the growing season. Analyzing 26 mixtures of five varieties, we found significant overyielding at harvest, that is, mixtures were on average more productive than expected based on component pure stands. This grain yield overyielding was well predicted from deviations between mixture and pure stand canopy cover estimations, derived from HTFP mid‐way through the growing season. This shows that (i) positive interactions between oat varieties occur already at an early stage, (ii) such interactions lead to increased potential for light interception, (iii) HTFP offers rapid, scalable methods to screen for performant variety mixtures.

Plant phenotyping relevance

HTFPによるキャノピー被覆率の反復測定と収量予測を、品種混合のスクリーニング手法として中心的に評価しているため。

Code and data availability

The paper's oat variety-mixture phenotyping data (canopy cover, grain yield overyielding) and analysis code are not publicly deposited; the authors state they are available only upon reasonable request. No public repository, dataset, or code URL is provided in the supplied blocks.

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