Highly productive sown biodiverse pastures with low invasion risk

Abstract

Driscoll et al. (1) have recently drawn attention to the risk of new pasture plants becoming invasive, because the same biological traits that promote pasture productivity may also facilitate the invasion of natural areas. The authors indicate some aspects that could mitigate the risk of invasion: namely, the use of native species to develop new pasture plants, the avoidance of new characteristics associated with environmental weeds, and the selection of new characteristics that limit invasion risk. Here we describe a system that meets the above criteria—specifically, the last one—through the existence of a mismatch between the environmental conditions found in managed and in natural areas, such that improved pasture plants face environmental limitations in natural areas while keeping a high performance in managed ones.