Description

In agriculture, intraspecific competition is undesirable, since it drives the evolution of traits toward phenotypic values lowering group performance. Plant height is a well-documented example: tall plants win access to light over shorter plants by diverting resources to vegetative structures, which leads to a negative correlation between height and seed production of the group. This motivated breeding for shorter plants during the Green Revolution. Agriculture is nowadays challenged by the need to ensure crop production while limiting environmental costs. Density is known to strongly affect competition for resources, and is a main limiting factor for crop yields. Breeding for cooperative phenotypes that do not invest resources in competitive interactions at high planting density could help sparing natural land from conversion to agriculture. Still, apart from height for plants competing for light, we know very little about the traits that affect the outcome of competition, the phenotypes that make a plant cooperative on such traits, and which breeding strategies can promote cooperative phenotypes. Using durum wheat as a model species, Scoop will address three main questions:  (1) Which phenotypes and alleles are cooperative at high planting density? (2) Has cooperation evolved during domestication and breeding? (3) Which breeding schemes can select for cooperation?