Quantifying morpho-physiological traits that describe canopy and biomass formation and partitioning processes for spring wheat genotypes grown under contrasting nitrogen supply

ABSTRACT

Radiation interception, radiation use efficiency (RUE) and harvest index (HI) are the key determinants of grain yield in cereal species. However, little is known about how these traits affect grain yield among spring wheat genotypes grown under low and optimum nitrogen (N) fertiliser supply. We used two experiments, in a field (Experiment 1; 2017–2018) and glasshouse (Experiment 2; 2018–2019) to investigate the effects of these traits on grain yield. Grain yield increased by 35% with increasing N fertiliser supply to 8.80 t/ha in Experiment 1 and 151% to 8.33 t/ha in Experiment 2. Grain yield was lowest for ‘Reliance’ and highest for ‘Discovery’ in both experiments. Differences in grain yield were not associated with HI. As the RUE did not differ among genotypes, the yield differences were attributed to the different amounts of radiation intercepted; a result of the faster leaf area expansion rate (LAER) and subsequent higher maximum green leaf area index (GLAI), and a longer leaf area duration (LAD). The differences in LAER and maximum GLAI among the genotypes were associated with a differences in specific leaf area (cm²/g). Our results suggest that improved grain yields in spring wheat can be achieved by focusing breeding efforts on canopy characteristics to increase radiation interception.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical green leaf area index (GLAI_crit)
• harvest index (HI)
• leaf area duration (LAD)
• leaf area expansion rate (LAER)
• leaf area senescence rate (LASR)
• photosynthetically active radiation (PAR)
• PAR extinction coefficient (k_PAR)
• radiation use efficiency (RUE)

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge technical assistance at Lincoln University Greenhouse Nurseries facility led by Brent Richards, Lincoln University Nutrient Analysis Laboratory led by Roger Cresswell, Plant & Food Research teams in the Field Operations, Cropping Systems & Environment group. Dr Paul Johnston (Pre-Breeding team) and Catherine Munro (Annual Crops team) at Plant & Food Research provided fruitful discussions during this study. Kate Richards (Data Science team at Plant & Food Research) assisted with experimental design and analysis of the data.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Research was completed as part of the first authors PhD study at Lincoln University, with support from Plant & Food Research’s Sustainable Agro-ecosystems (SAE) programme through funding from the Strategic Science Investment Fund (SSIF).