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To meet the increasing global demand for food, feed, fibre and other plant‐derived products, a steep increase in crop productivity is a scientifically and technically challenging imperative. The CropBooster‐P project, a response to the H2020 call ‘Future proofing our plants’, is developing a roadmap for plant research to improve crops critical for the future of European agriculture by increasing crop yield, nutritional quality, value for non‐food applications and sustainability. However, if we want to efficiently improve crop production in Europe and prioritize methods for crop trait improvement in the coming years, we need to take into account future socio‐economic, technological and global developments, including numerous policy and socio‐economic challenges and constraints. Based on a wide range of possible global trends and key uncertainties, we developed four extreme future learning scenarios that depict complementary future developments. Here, we elaborate on how the scenarios could inform and direct future plant research, and we aim to highlight the crop improvement approaches that could be the most promising or appropriate within each of these four future world scenarios. Moreover, we discuss some key plant technology options that would need to be developed further to meet the needs of multiple future learning scenarios, such as improving methods for breeding and genetic engineering. In addition, other diverse platforms of food production may offer unrealized potential, such as underutilized terrestrial and aquatic species as alternative sources of nutrition and biomass production. We demonstrate that although several methods or traits could facilitate a more efficient crop production system in some of the scenarios, others may offer great potential in all four of the future learning scenarios. Altogether, this indicates that depending on which future we are heading toward, distinct plant research fields should be given priority if we are to meet our food, f

The growing world population and global increases in the standard of living both result in an increasing demand for food, feed and other plant‐derived products. In the coming years, plant‐based research will be among the major drivers ensuring food security and the expansion of the bio‐based economy. Crop productivity is determined by several factors, including the available physical and agricultural resources, crop management, and the resource use efficiency, quality and intrinsic yield potential of the chosen crop. This review focuses on intrinsic yield potential, since understanding its determinants and their biological basis will allow to maximize the plant's potential in food and energy production. Yield potential is determined by a variety of complex traits that integrate strictly regulated processes and their underlying gene regulatory networks. Due to this inherent complexity, numerous potential targets have been identified that could be exploited to increase crop yield. These encompass diverse metabolic and physical processes at the cellular, organ and canopy level. We present an overview of some of the distinct biological processes considered to be crucial for yield determination that could further be exploited to improve future crop productivity.

The growing world population and global increases in the standard of living both result in an increasing demand for food, feed and other plant-derived products. In the coming years, plant-based research will be among the major drivers ensuring food security and the expansion of the bio-based economy. Crop productivity is determined by several factors, including the available physical and agricultural resources, crop management, and the resource use efficiency, quality and intrinsic yield potential of the chosen crop. This review focuses on intrinsic yield potential, since understanding its determinants and their biological basis will allow to maximize the plant's potential in food and energy production. Yield potential is determined by a variety of complex traits that integrate strictly regulated processes and their underlying gene regulatory networks. Due to this inherent complexity, numerous potential targets have been identified that could be exploited to increase crop yield. These encompass diverse metabolic and physical processes at the cellular, organ and canopy level. We present an overview of some of the distinct biological processes considered to be crucial for yield determination that could further be exploited to improve future crop productivity.

Introduction: Rice plays a critical role in human livelihoods and food security. However, its cultivation requires inputs that are not accessible to all farming communities and can have negative effects on ecosystems. simultaneously, ecological research demonstrates that biodiversity management within fields contributes to ecosystem functioning. Methods: This study aims to evaluate the mixture effect of four functionally distinct rice varieties in terms of characteristics and agronomic performance and their spatial arrangement on the upland rice performance in the highlands of Madagascar. The study was conducted during the 2021-2022 rainfall season at two close sites in Madagascar. Both site differ from each other's in soil properties and soil fertility management. The experimental design at each site included three modalities: i) plot composition, i.e., pure stand or binary mixture; ii) the balance between the varieties within a mixture; iii) and for the balanced mixture (50% of each variety), the spatial arrangement, i.e., row or checkerboard patterns. Data were collected on yields (grain and biomass), and resistance to Striga asiatica infestation, Pyricularia oryzea and bacterial leaf blight (BLB) caused by Xanthomonas oryzae-pv from each plot. Results and discussion: Varietal mixtures produced significantly higher grain and biomass yields, and significantly lower incidence of Pyricularia oryzea compared to pure stands. No significant differences were observed for BLB and striga infestation. These effects were influenced by site fertility, the less fertilized site showed stronger mixture effects with greater gains in grain yield (60%) and biomass yield (42%). The most unbalanced repartition (75% and 25% of each variety) showed the greatest mixture effect for grain yield at both sites, with a strong impact of the varietal identity within the plot. The mixture was most effective when EARLY_MUTANT_IAC_165 constituted 75% of the density associated with other varietie

Intercropping consists in growing distinct crops on the same plot at the same time. It may play a role in the transition to sustainable agriculture thanks to its benefits, e.g. higher yield, lesser use of pesticides. Intercropping has experienced a particular boom in recent years in market gardening and there are now countless mainstream market gardening books dealing with it. However, its use by professional market gardeners remains low. The most likely reason is that intercropping is more complex than the image conveyed by these books and very little objective data is available to help market gardeners in its relevant implementation. This thesis tackles the issue of intercropping in market gardening with the aim of providing market gardeners with knowledge and reliable information enlightening management choices. We begin by listing the interactions observed in intercropping, both between the associated crops and with their environment, and present them as networks. We then investigate the prediction of intercropping outcome based on complementarity principles by comparing the results of various intercrops in on-field trials. We show the importance of the difference in sowing date, growth dynamics and maximum soil coverage between crops in the determination of yield gain and yield gain asymmetry in intercrops. Finally, we address the issue of yield inter-site variability by comparing the growth of three intercrops in different farms, using participatory trials. We explain our methodology and show the consistency of intercrops relative yield in a range of environmental conditions and crop management practices. Our approach is purposely exploratory. This thesis paves the way for the scientific study of intercropping in market gardening and highlights some key points for the use of intercropping by market gardeners., (AGRO - Sciences agronomiques et ingénierie biologique) -- UCL, 2022

Plant root systems are responsible for the capture of soil water and minerals essential for their growth. With the need to reduce fertiliser use and improve resilience to extreme climate events, improving resource capture efficiency has become a hot topic in agriculture. This includes optimising root distribution in soils via appropriate root system architecture and growth. Root systems are often described using integrative variables, e.g. number and biomass, that are cost-effective but provide limited cues on root distribution. Modelling studies have shown that root systems can also be described using process variables, depicting growth and development processes. These are expected to be more closely connected to the underlying biology than the integrative variables and to lead more directly to optimisation paths. In this thesis, we created a novel high-throughput phenotyping pipeline of plants grown in aeroponics. This pipeline exploits high spatial and temporal resolution image series to estimate process variables from simple morphologic features, with very limited computing resources. It was used to analyse the genetic architecture of process and integrative variables on diversity panels of bread and durum wheat (500 genotypes) and was evaluated against independent experiments (pouches, rhizotubes and field). We demonstrated that process information can be estimated easily from simple morphologic features if dense time series are available. We also showed that lateral root formation, despite being highly variable along the root system, can be constant when cumulated at the whole plant level. Cross-experiment validation revealed that genotypic differences for process variables were largely environment-specific. Finally, the genetic architecture of process variables was not found to be simpler than that of the integrative ones., (AGRO - Sciences agronomiques et ingénierie biologique) -- UCL, 2022

The role of biodiversity on ecosystem functioning is increasingly discussed in a multifunctionality context. However, assessing multiple performances in natura is complex and applied perspectives remain scarce. Interestingly, the growing interest for varietal mixtures in agronomy represents a unique opportunity to challenge the role of intraspecific diversity for the regulation of multiple outcomes at the same time. This is the case for rice production in Madagascar. Especially, as the highlands region is increasingly impacted by climate change and by the socio-economic burden resulting from these environmental changes. Pests and pathogens are placing undue pressure on rice crops while disease resistance is also being affected by climate change. The effect of varietal diversity on upland-rice multifunctionality, as well as yield components and resistance to Pyricularia were assessed and quantified during a two-year trial in the highlands of Madagascar. In the first year of the trial, binary mixtures of ten phenotypically contrasted varieties were established. Based on these first-year results, the four most contrasting varieties were selected to repeat the field trial the following season, this time with the inclusion of two levels of fertilization (high and low). First-year results showed that the crop susceptibility to blast disease was reduced by 6.5% in the mixed plots compared to plots with pure stand. Furthermore, varietal mixture generated a yield gain of 13% compared to pure crops in the first year and a yield gain of 17% in the second year under low fertilization. In the highly fertilized treatment, however, the gain was reduced to 4%. In order to identify the multifunctional variety combinations, a functional classification using a combinatorial model was used. Our results suggest that varietal association composed of different functional groups promotes the multifunctionality of cropping systems, when cultivated in suboptimal conditions for plant growth.

Sorghum is a water-efficient crop and an important cereal in semiarid and arid environments where water availability limits production. Providing farmers with sorghum genotypes with specific agro-morphological characteristics of high double production (grains and biomass) would help to maintain or obtain high yields in these environments. The SAMARA model was used to define dual-purpose sorghum ideotypes for different target environments. Model calibration and evaluation were carried out with experimental data collected in Nioro du Rip in 2015 and Sinthiou Malem from 2013 to 2016 on 10 contrasting sorghum genotypes. Daily weather conditions from 1950 to 2016 were used for the simulations. Also considered were the different environmental (soil and climate) conditions of Bambey, Nioro du Rip, and Sinthiou Malem (Senegal). Simulations for the identification of optimal genotypic parameters in these target environments highlighted three ideotypes showing performances for a dual-purpose (grain and fodder) production superior to the reference genotype Nieleni. This was thanks to their strong capacity to colonize the soil (long roots) and to maintain green leaves (stay-green) throughout the cycle. Hence, long roots and staygreen trait should be strongly considered while selecting or developing dualpurpose genotypes of sorghum for the target environments, especially in less-watered areas like Bambey.