Format: ORAL

Diego E. Dvila1, Julieta A. Rosell2

1 Instituto de Ecología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad de México, México 2 Instituto de Ecología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad de México, México

Despite increasingly robust understanding of the drivers underlying ecological strategies in wild plants, the consequences of plant domestication on the expression of these strategies in crops remains poorly understood. For example, there is debate regarding whether the same patterns of trait covariation observed in wild plants are also found in crops, such as between the leaf (LES) and root economic spectra (RES). To explore patterns of trait covariation in crops, a system with high ecological variation, more than one event of domestication, and a long domestication history is ideal. Beans (Phaseolus spp.) represent such a system. The genus includes five domesticated species that represent independent instances of domestication, and hundreds of landraces that grow in a wide range of environmental and management conditions. Although domestication is predicted to produce strong shifts toward acquisitive strategies under the more stable and fertile conditions of agroecosystems, it is less clear whether it would favor uncoupling of the LES and RES. In this study, we cultivated 20 bean landraces (four per domesticated species) in a common garden at a Mexican temperate highland and measured nine functional traits in leaves, stems, and roots before the reproductive phase. Our results indicated that despite strong artificial selection, LES and RES are conserved in beans. However, we found evidence of decoupling between LES and RES, which has also been reported for other crops. There was also wide variation in mean values across landraces along a conservative-acquisitive continuum related to the ecological preferences of the species. This work represents the first effort to understand the consequences of domestication on beans from a functional trait perspective. Understanding patterns and causes of trait correlations in crops is not only important for breeding efforts, but also for predicting plant responses in the context of climate change.