Harnessing monocrop breeding strategies for intercrops

Intercropping is considered advantageous for many reasons, including increased yield stability, nutritional value and the provision of various regulating ecosystem services. However, intercropping also introduces diverse competition effects between the mixing partners, which can negatively impact their agronomic performance. Therefore, selecting complementary intercropping partners is the key to realizing a well-mixed crop production. Several specialized intercrop breeding concepts have been proposed to support the development of complementary varieties, but their practical implementation still needs to be improved. To lower this adoption threshold, we explore the potential of introducing minor adaptations to commonly used monocrop breeding strategies as an initial stepping stone towards implementing dedicated intercrop breeding schemes. While we acknowledge that recurrent selection for reciprocal mixing abilities is likely a more effective breeding paradigm to obtain genetic progress for intercrops, a well-considered adaptation of monoculture breeding strategies is far less intrusive concerning the design of the breeding programme and allows for balancing genetic gain for both monocrop and intercrop performance. The main idea is to develop compatible variety combinations by improving the monocrop performance in the two breeding pools in parallel and testing for intercrop performance in the later stages of selection. We show that the optimal stage for switching from monocrop to intercrop testing should be adapted to the specificity of the crop and the heritability of the traits involved. However, the genetic correlation between the monocrop and intercrop trait performance is the primary driver of the intercrop breeding scheme optimization process.