摘要
Humankind is facing an unprecedented challenge to produce enough food for the coming decades because of population growth and increase in the average demand per capita,changes in climate conditions,and limitations in arable land area,as well as pressure on the water and resources.Two main avenues should be concurrently taken to increase crop productivity:improving genetics to get more efficient and resilient crops and developing optimal crop management practices.The description and understanding of crop functioning will therefore be instrumental both for genetic improvement and crop management.It will help to associate functional traits with the genome which will accelerate genetic progress by having more efficient techniques to design ideotypes adapted to particular pedoclimatic and crop management conditions and create them from the available genetic diversity.
