Closing the yield gap: can metabolomics be of help?

The difference between the potential yield of a crop and the yield obtained by farmers-often called the yield gap-is explained by environmental cues and/or deficient management practises. Up to now, it has been mostly addressed by mitigating stresses, i.e. by improving management practises, and little by the development of more resilient varieties. However, increasing the inputs in order to tackle the yield gap is getting less and less sustainable in the context of more frequent and stronger climate events, a growing population, and increasingly limited land and input availabilities. Thus, the aim should be for a more sustainable biomass production, which involves, among other strategies, the breeding of resilient crop varieties. Melandri et al. (2019) investigated the leaf metabolic parameters associated with yield loss of 292 rice varieties submitted to drought stress in the field.