Abstract
For seed crops, yield is the cumulative result of both source and sink strength for photoassimilates and nutrients over the course of seed development. Source strength for photoassimilates is dictated by both net photosynthetic rate and the rate of photoassimilate remobilisation from source tissues. This review focuses on the current understanding of how the source-sink relationship in crop plants influences rates of yield development and the resilience of yield and nutritional quality. We present the limitations of current approaches to accurately measure sink strength and emphasize differences in coordination between photosynthesis and yield under varying environmental conditions. We highlight the potential to exploit source-sink dynamics, in order to improve yields and emphasize the importance of resilience in yield and nutritional quality with implications for plant breeding strategies.
Highlights
Yield of many crops rarely meets its maximum potential for production
It is possible that nutritional quality will reflect the environmental conditions in which the plant is grown (Figure 2)
The concepts of resilience and nutritional quality need to be incorporated into breeding strategies to provide adequate tools for farmers across the development spectrum
Summary
Yield of many crops rarely meets its maximum potential for production. The resulting yield gap is defined as the difference between average yield at the farm gate and crop yield potential for a specific land area. Efforts to improve yield have been largely carbon centric the chemical reduction of carbon into photoassimilates is unlikely to be the controlling process in plant growth, except in select systems with “luxurious” supplementation of resources such as nutrients and water (see for example, Korner, 2015) This carbon centric approach, facilitated through the use of harvest index may have led to indirect selection for alternative traits such as a crops ability to accumulate nitrogen (Sinclair, 1998). Understanding the way energy and nutrients move through a plant and into a developing seed is key to ensuring the efficiency of yield production Based on this framework, it is possible that nutritional quality will reflect the environmental conditions in which the plant is grown (Figure 2). The prioritization of individual grain development both along the nodes of the plant and throughout development requires further exploration through detailed phenotypic characterisation of individual seed development
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