Bread and durum wheat yields under a wide range of environmental conditions

Abstract

It is frequently assumed that durum wheat is more tolerant to stress than bread wheat. Unfortunately few research papers compare the performance of both species side-by-side under a wide range of environments in field conditions. We aimed to compare durum and bread wheat performance in a field study under contrasting treatments of water and nitrogen during three experimental seasons. In addition we compiled a comprehensive database with data from field experiments in which both species were grown in the same field conditions. A cross-over interaction of yield from bread vs. durum wheat was found, but oppositely to the hypothesis, bread outyielded durum wheat in the low-yielding conditions while durum wheat tended to have higher potential yield. We then divided the database in decades in which the cultivars were released and found that in the 1960s bread wheat outyielded durum wheat in almost any comparison whilst in the 2000s durum wheat outyielded bread wheat in most comparisons. Grain weight was constitutively higher in durum than in bread wheat, likely associated with a lower fruiting efficiency in the former; but in both types of wheat grain number per m2 was the component responsible for yield sensitivity to environmental changes. Differences in yield were also related to differences in water and nitrogen use efficiencies: under low-yielding conditions bread wheat was consistently more efficient than durum wheat and under high-yielding conditions durum wheat was more efficient.