Advances in Breeding for Mixed Cropping - Incomplete Factorials and the Producer/Associate Concept

Mixed cropping has been suggested as a resource-efficient approach to meet high produce demands while maintaining biodiversity and minimizing environmental impact. Current breeding programs do not select for enhanced general mixing ability (GMA) and neglect biological interactions within species mixtures. Clear concepts and efficient experimental designs, adapted to breeding for mixed cropping and encoded into appropriate statistical models, are lacking. Thus, a model framework for GMA and SMA (specific mixing ability) was established. Results of a simulation study showed that an incomplete factorial design combines advantages of two commonly used full factorials, and enables to estimate GMA, SMA, and their variances in a resource-efficient way. This model was extended to the Producer (Pr) and Associate (As) concept to exploit additional information based on fraction yields. It was shown that the Pr/As concept allows to characterize genotypes for their contribution to total mixture yield, and, when relating to plant traits, allows to describe biological interaction functions (BIF) in a mixed crop. Incomplete factorial designs show the potential to drastically improve genetic gain by testing an increased number of genotypes using the same amount of resources. The Pr/As concept can further be employed to maximize GMA in an informed and efficient way. The BIF of a trait can be used to optimize species ratios at harvest as well as to extend our understanding of competitive and facilitative interactions in a mixed plant community. This study provides an integrative methodological framework to promote breeding for mixed cropping.