Open resorce

Sustainable intensification of agriculture considers the increasing of yields for the most important staple crops as a central point in the strategy to alleviate food security issues. However, in many parts of the world there has been a plateau in yields, which shows that is necessary to develop new agronomical and technological strategies to fulfill future demands. Carbon assimilation is the main determinant of crop biomass and a key trait for improving wheat genetic yield potential. CO2 diffusion from the atmosphere to the chloroplast stroma can be divided into two steps, stomatal conductance (gs) describes the gas phase pathway for CO2 from the atmosphere to the intercellular airspace, while mesophyll conductance (gm) refers to the intracellular pathway to Rubisco. In this work, 13 wheat genotypes were grown in Yaqui Valley, northwest Mexico to determine yield performance, photosynthetic performance (including gs and gm) and leaf anatomy traits. It was shown that these genotypes are very diverse for most of the traits analyzed. Based on yield performance, two groups were identified, either high yielding genotypes or low yielding genotypes. Data shows that yield was positively correlated with A, gs and gm, but negative correlations were observed between yield and SLA and between gm and LAI. All these results suggest that leaf anatomy plays a central role in determining the photosynthetic performance of genotypes and contributes to final grain yield.

Wheat CRP FP3 - Global partnership to accelerate genetic gain in farmers field

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