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. 2021 Nov 28;10(12):2612.
doi: 10.3390/plants10122612.

In-Field Comparative Study of Landraces vs. Modern Wheat Genotypes under a Mediterranean Climate

Sivan Frankin  1   2 , Rajib Roychowdhury  1 , Kamal Nashef  1 , Shahal Abbo  2 , David J Bonfil  3 , Roi Ben-David  1
Affiliations

In-Field Comparative Study of Landraces vs. Modern Wheat Genotypes under a Mediterranean Climate

Sivan Frankin et al. Plants (Basel). .

Abstract

The Near East climate ranges from arid to a Mediterranean, under which local wheat landraces have been grown for over millennia, assumingly accumulating a unique repertoire of genetic adaptations. In the current study, we subjected a subset of the Israeli Palestinian Landraces (IPLR) collection (n = 19: durum and bread wheat landraces, modern wheat cultivars, and landraces mixtures) to full-field evaluation. The multifield experiment included a semiarid site (2018-2019, 2019-2020) under low (L) and high (H) supplementary irrigation, and a Mediterranean site (2019-2020). Water availability had a major impact on crop performance. This was reflected in a strong discrimination between environments for biomass productivity and yield components. Compared to landraces, modern cultivars exhibited significantly higher grain yield (GY) across environments (+102%) reflecting the effect of the Green Revolution. However, under the Gilat19 (L) environment, this productivity gap was significantly reduced (only +39%). Five excelling landraces and the durum mix exhibited good agronomic potential across all trails. This was expressed in relatively high GY (2.3-2.85 t ha-1), early phenology (86-96 days to heading) and lodging resistance. Given the growing interest of stakeholders and consumers, these might be considered future candidates for the local artisanal wheat grain market. Yet, this step should be taken only after establishing an adjustable field management protocol.

Keywords: bread wheat; durum wheat; semi-arid climate; water-stress; wheat landraces; yield stability.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; or in the decision to publish the results.

Figures

Figure A1
Figure A1
Seasonal temperature, precipitation, and supplementary irrigation of the five studied environments.
Figure A1
Figure A1
Seasonal temperature, precipitation, and supplementary irrigation of the five studied environments.
Figure 1
Figure 1
Principal component analysis of agronomic traits under five environments across two seasons, 2018–2019 and 2019–2020. Modern bread wheat cultivars (solid gray symbols), modern durum cultivars (solid black symbols), bread wheat landraces (hollow gray symbols), and durum wheat landraces (hollow black symbols). Biplot vectors are trait factors loading for PC1 and PC2. GY, grain yield; SpW, spike weight; DM_M, dry matter at maturity; SpN, spike number; PH, plant height; GDDtH, growing degree days to heading; CT, canopy temperature; and TKW, thousand kernel weight. Green dashed line separates the modern cultivars from the landraces (with two exceptions). Yellow dashed line separates Gilat19 (L) from the rest of the environments.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Association between durum wheat grain yield (t ha−1) and growing degree days to heading across five environments: modern durum cultivars (solid symbols); durum landraces (hollow symbols). The GY mean of modern cv. Solet under the two most extreme environment is marked by a dashed line.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Genotypic groups’ mean comparison under five environments. Grain yield (GY) (a), thousand kernel weight (TKW) (b), and dry matter accumulation during maturity (DM_M) (c). Different letters indicate significant differences between genotypic groups within environments using the Tukey–Kramer test (p ≤ 0.05).
Figure 4
Figure 4
Lodging rate of the IPLR subset panel. Lodging score (from 0 = no lodging to 5 = complete lodging) across 5 environments during 2018–2019 and 2019–3020 seasons (a). Correlations between lodging, plant height (b), and growing degree days to heading (c) of 19 genotypes in 5 different environments. Modern cultivars (solid symbols); landraces (hollow symbols); durum landraces (dotted line); bread wheat landraces (dashed line); durum modern cultivars (continuous line); bread wheat modern cultivars (dotted dashed line). Slopes values are presented only where the linear model was significant (p < 0.05).
Figure 5
Figure 5
Superiority index (Pi) of genotypic groups across environments: Pi for grain yield (a) and dry matter biomass accumulation at maturity (b). Different letters indicate significant differences between genotypic groups using Tukey–Kramer’s test (p ≤ 0.05).
Figure 6
Figure 6
Drought susceptibility index (S) between wheat genotypes.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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