New avenues for increasing yield and stability in C3 cereals: exploring ear photosynthesis

Small grain cereals such as wheat, rice and barley are among the most important crops worldwide. Any attempt to increase crop productivity and stability through breeding implies developing new strategies for plant phenotyping, including defining ideotype attributes for selection. Recently, the role of non-foliar photosynthetic organs, particularly the inflorescences, has received increasing attention. For example, ear photosynthesis has been...