Field scale functional agrobiodiversity in organic wheat: Effects on weed reduction, disease susceptibility and yield

Deployment of diversity at the species and at the genetic levels can improve the ability of crops to withstand a wide range of biotic and abiotic stressors in organic and low-input cropping systems, where the response to stresses through external input is limited or restricted in comparison with conventional systems. Although there are several strategies to use agrobiodiversity in wheat-based systems, their implementation is limited by the lack of a clear relationship between agrobiodiversity and provision of key agroecosystem services. In a three-year field trial in Central Italy we compared common wheat Italian and Hungarian pure lines, Italian old cultivars and Hungarian and British Composite Cross Populations (CCPs), grown with or without a contemporarily sown Subterranean clover living mulch. We aimed at linking crop performance, in terms of yield, weed reduction and disease susceptibility, to three categories of functional diversity: (1) functional identity, represented by the identifying traits of cultivars, (2) functional diversity, represented by the genetic heterogeneity of wheat crop population, and (3) functional composition, represented by the co-presence of wheat and the living mulch.Concerning cultivars, effects of functional identity were predominant for weed reduction and grain yield. Old cultivars tended to better suppress weeds but to be less yielding. Italian cultivars were more advantaged than cultivars of foreign origin, thanks to a better matching of their growth cycle into local climate. Functional diversity effects on yield and weed reduction were confounded with identity effects, given that all the CCPs were of foreign origin. In fact, the performance of CCPs was generally aligned with a central-European pure line. However, differences in yield components suggest that CCPs can evolve peculiar yield formation strategies. Moreover, CCPs were less susceptible than pure lines to foliar diseases. For functional composition, the living mulch was able to reduce dicotyledonous weed abundance and weed biomass without reducing wheat yield unless wheat was poorly established. Despite the strong morphological and phenological differences among the tested cultivars, no interactions were found between cultivar and living mulch presence, suggesting that, in conditions similar to our experiments, there is room to freely combine elements of crop diversity. Crop diversification strategies in wheat should be further explored and optimized, especially by constituting CCPs from locally adapted germplasms and by improving the feasibility and efficacy of legume living mulches.