Plant domestication disrupts biodiversity effects across major crop types

Abstract

Plant diversity fosters productivity in natural ecosystems. Biodiversity effects might increase agricultural yields at no cost in additional inputs. However, the effects of diversity on crop assemblages are inconsistent, probably because crops and wild plants differ in a range of traits relevant to plant–plant interactions. We tested whether domestication has changed the potential of crop mixtures to over-yield by comparing the performance and traits of major crop species and those of their wild progenitors under varying levels of diversity. We found stronger biodiversity effects in mixtures of wild progenitors, due to larger selection effects. Variation in selection effects was partly explained by within-mixture differences in leaf size. Our results indicate that domestication might disrupt the ability of crops to benefit from diverse neighbourhoods via reduced trait variance. These results highlight potential limitations of current crop mixtures to over-yield and the potential of breeding to re-establish variance and increase mixture performance.