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Stage-specific genotype-by-environment interactions determine yield components in wheat

Nature Plants volume 9, pages 1688–1696 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

In cereal crops, environmental fluctuations affect different physiological processes during various developmental phases associated with the formation of yield components. Because these effects are coupled with cultivar-specific phenology, studies investigating environmental responses in different cultivars can give contradictory results regarding key phases impacting yield performance. To dissect how genotype-by-environment interactions affect grain yield in winter wheat, we estimated the sensitivities of yield components to variation in global radiation, temperature and precipitation in 220 cultivars across 81 time-windows ranging from double ridge to seed desiccation. Environmental sensitivity responses were prominent in the short-term physiological subphases of spike and kernel development, causing phenologically dependent, stage-specific genotype-by-environment interactions. Here we reconcile contradicting findings from previous studies and show previously undetected effects; for example, the positive impact of global radiation on kernel weight during canopy senescence. This deep insight into the three-way interactions between phenology, yield formation and environmental fluctuations provides comprehensive new information for breeding and modelling cereal crops.

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Fig. 1: Effects of GR in 81 time-windows before and after heading (thermal time = 0 °Cd) on KpS.
Fig. 2: Identification of time-windows of yield components (KpS, Sno and TKW) sensitive to variations in environmental variables (GR, Tmax, Tmean, Tmin and PR).
Fig. 3: Time-windows of KpS that showed significant synergistic effects of two environmental variables on its formation.

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Data availability

The complete set of climate data and simulated soil data, yield components of all environments, and sensitivity and significance of yield components to all environmental variables of all genotypes and all time-windows are available in the Zenodo data repository54.

Code availability

No custom algorithm was used in this study. All code used to analyse the data is available from the authors. Please contact the first author or corresponding author (sabir@gem.uni-hannover.de or tsu-wei.chen@hu-berlin.de) in case of interest.

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Acknowledgements

Funding for this study was provided by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research grant no. 031A354. T.-W.C. was funded by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation) under project no. 442020478.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Horticultural Production Systems, Leibniz University Hannover, Hannover, Germany

    Khadija Sabir & Hartmut Stützel

  2. Department of Agronomy and Crop Science, Christian Albrechts University of Kiel, Kiel, Germany

    Till Rose & Henning Kage

  3. Department of Plant Breeding, IFZ Research Centre for Biosystems, Land Use and Nutrition, Justus Liebig University, Giessen, Germany

    Benjamin Wittkop, Andreas Stahl, Rod J. Snowdon & Wolfgang Friedt

  4. Julius Kuehn Institute (JKI), Federal Research Centre for Cultivated Plants, Institute for Resistance Research and Stress Tolerance, Quedlinburg, Germany

    Andreas Stahl, Frank Ordon & Holger Zetzsche

  5. Institute of Crop Science and Resource Conservation, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

    Agim Ballvora & Jens Léon

  6. Field Lab Campus Klein-Altendorf, University of Bonn, Rheinbach, Germany

    Jens Léon

  7. Group of Intensive Plant Food Systems, Albrecht Daniel Thaer Institut of Agricultural and Horticultural Science, Humboldt University Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Tsu-Wei Chen

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Contributions

T.-W.C. conceived the analyses. K.S. and T.-W.C. analysed the data. T.R. simulated the soil water content. B.W., A.S. and R.J.S. designed the experiments. T.-W.C., T.R., H.Z., A.B., F.O., J.L., H.K., H.S. and W.F. performed and supervised the experiments and provided data. K.S., H.S. and T.-W.C. wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Tsu-Wei Chen.

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Nature Plants thanks Enli Wang, Juan Burgueño and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Figs. 1–11, Tables 1–6 and Method.

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Sabir, K., Rose, T., Wittkop, B. et al. Stage-specific genotype-by-environment interactions determine yield components in wheat. Nat. Plants 9, 1688–1696 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-023-01516-8

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