Modeling carbon allocation strategies for high-yielding perennial crops

We constructed a generalizable grassland model of within-plant carbon allocation strategies with the objective of furthering understanding of the evolutionary ecology of perenniality and illuminating possibilities for breeding high-yielding, long-lived crops in the service of regenerative agriculture. The grassland Perfect Plasticity Approximation model handles space-filling, recruitment, and carbon balance to determine the within-plant allocation of carbon given trade-offs involving perenniality. We used our model to conduct (1) a game-theoretic analysis of evolutionarily stable strategies to determine the effects of natural selection on perenniality and annual reproductive yield, and (2) analyses of physiological feasibility and sensitivity to determine the range of allocational strategies that might be achievable through breeding. Model results suggest that natural selection already maximizes annual reproductive yield in plants that have adapted to the evolutionarily stable strategy in the context of constraints of carbon allocation to foliage, roots, stems, and growth, leaving little room for yield improvement without also breeding a reduction in carbon allocation elsewhere. Breeding reductions in stem mass and root mass show promise for increasing annual reproductive yield. Further research is needed, however, to understand how reductions in root or stem mass would affect a perennial’s provisioning of ecosystem services.