Yield potential in modern wheat varieties: its association with a less competitive ideotype

Field experiments were conducted with modern semidwarf spring wheat cultivars representing a range of yield potential in order to compare their adaptation to levels of interplant competition for resources. Levels of competition were altered, in both leaf canopy and underground, by manipulating rows of plants in eight-row yield plots. Competition for light was decreased by bending adjacent rows away from the central two rows thus permitting...