By Dan Moser
The international research team includes five University of Nebraska–Lincoln scientists. Researchers examined long-term trends in wheat improvement, finding that the standard, decades-old approach — growing older and newer wheat varieties side by side and comparing their yields — cannot clearly separate two different types of breeding gains: increases in inherent yield potential and ongoing “maintenance breeding” that keeps varieties adapted to evolving pests, diseases and changing climate conditions.
Understanding the factors driving crop yields is essential to targeting research dollars to meet a growing world population’s food needs, said Patricio Grassini, Sunkist Distinguished Professor of Agronomy and one of the researchers involved in the study, which is the subject of an article in Nature Communications.
“The increases in crop productivity we see year by year can be explained mainly by two factors,” Grassini said. “One is improved agronomic factors like, for example, fertilizers, pest control and so forth. The other is genetic improvement.”
Source : unl.edu