Breeding Cold-Tolerant Crops

Low-temperature stress is considered as the major abiotic constraint limiting plant\u2019s growth and the potential land cultivation. Crop adaptation to limiting temperature is thus an important breeding objective because it determines yield stability in environment-friendly cultivation practices. Conventional breeding methods had limited success in improving the cold tolerance of important crop plants because of the complexity of stress tolerance traits, low genetic variance, and lack of efficient selection criteria. The knowledge of physiology, of genetics, and of the DNA technology has improved substantially nowadays, and these advancements will allow the breeder to predict the breeding value of best genotypes by using physiology, genetics, and molecular information. The perspective for selecting more effectively cold-tolerant crops will involve efficient genotyping, reliable phenotyping and envirotyping, and adequate statistical models

Functional agrobiodiversity and agroecosystem services in sustainable wheat production. A review

Agrobiodiversity can improve the sustainability of cropping systems in a context of low external inputs and unpredictable climate change. Agrobiodiversity strategies to grow wheat are breeding ad hoc cultivars for organic and low-input systems, wheat–legume intercrops and living mulches, cultivar mixtures, and the use of genetically heterogeneous populations. However, applying those strategies can fail due the lack of a well-focused framework. Therefore, we need a better integration between breeding and management and a clear focus on crop traits related to key agroecosystem services. Here, we review the use of agrobiodiversity in wheat production, focusing on breeding and management. We discuss five agroecosystem services: (1) weed reduction, (2) nitrogen use efficiency, (3) abiotic stress tolerance, (4) disease and pest reduction and (5) yield and yield stability. We categorise agrobiodiversity into functional identity, functional composition, and functional diversity, in order to link crop traits to agroecosystem services. Linking crop traits to agroecosystem services could in turn lead to concrete options for farmers and policy. We discuss the relations between crop identity and crop heterogeneity. We also discuss the partitioning of crop heterogeneity between functional composition and functional diversity