DIVERSify-ing for sustainability using cereal-legume 'plant teams'

Increasing the diversity of crop systems could enhance and stabilise crop yields while increasing sustainability. We report preliminary findings from two trials at the James Hutton Institute, UK, aiming to optimise the performance of spring cereal-legume species mixtures or ‘plant teams’. Commercial cereal and legume cultivars were tested for their performance in plant teams (compared to monocultures) under conventional and reduced input management. Wheat-faba bean plant teams were grown for silage and barley-pea plant teams were grown for grain. Over-yielding of species mixtures was detected in both trials. The best performing wheat-faba bean combinations contained the wheat variety Tybalt, while those based on the pea varieties Ingrid and Daytona combined with barley cultivars RGT Planet or KWS Sassy performed best in barley-pea plant teams. Preliminary analysis of plant traits is used to identify the mechanisms promoting productivity in these plant teams. These results were reported at the 'Advances in Legume Science and Practice' conference of the Associationof Applied Biologistsin Glasgow (2018).