Cereal variety and species mixtures in practice, with emphasis on disease resistance

Overview & Synopsis

Variety mixtures can provide functional diversity that limits pathogen and pest expansion, and that makes use of knowledge about interactions between hosts and their pests and pathogens to direct pathogen evolution. Indeed, one of the most powerful ways both to reduce the risk of resistance break-down and to still make use of defeated resistance genes is to use cereal variety and species mixtures. The most important mechanisms reducing disease in variety and species mixtures are barrier and frequency effects, and induced resistance. Differential adaptation, i.e. adaptation within races to specific host genotypic backgrounds, may prevent the rapid evolution of complex pathotypes in mixtures. Mixtures generally stabilise yields and yield losses due to disease; abiotic stresses are also better buffered than in pure stands. When mixture components are carefully put together, product quality can be enhanced or at least equal that of the pure stands. Mixture use in practice worldwide is reviewed.