Communications in Biometry and Crop Science

Communications
in Biometry and Crop Science

 

 

Contents

REGULAR ARTICLE
Visualizing harvest index in crops

Agnieszka Wnuk, Andrzej G. Górny, Jan Bocianowski, Marcin Kozak


Commun. Biometry Crop Sci. (2013) 8 (2), 48-59.
 

ABSTRACT
Harvest index describes plant capacity to allocate biomass (assimilates) into the formed reproductive parts; hence it is an important trait for plant breeding. Its relationships with biomass and grain yield follow the multiplicative yield component model, in which grain yield is a product of harvest index and biomass yield. In this paper a visualization technique is proposed to give insight into associations among harvest index, biomass yield and grain yield. The technique consists of several types of plots, namely stripcharts, a scatterplot matrix, a new type of plot, the MM–Contour plot (which is a contour plot dedicated to a multiplicative model), and its trellis version. Contrary to methods of yield component analysis, which offer information about the influence of harvest index and biomass yield on grain yield, the plots enable one to concentrate on harvest index and draw conclusions about the patterns of its relationships with biomass and grain yields for various groups like cultivars or environmental habitats. The technique is presented using data for 32 field-grown wheat cultivars and its subset of seven cultivars

Key Words: grain yield; scatterplot matrix; winter wheat; MM–Contour plot; trellis plot.