Envirotyping-informed mixed models to study the climatic drivers and yield seasonal variation for common beans in Brazil

Abstract

Common beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) is a staple food crop cultivated across various regions, seasons, and management systems in Brazil. To ensure production stability, it is essential to understand how climate factors affect cultivar development. This study aimed to determine the main edaphoclimatic drivers influencing the seasonal variation of common bean yield and their impact on genotype ranking across Brazil. Utilizing extensive databases, such as historical field trial records, allows for deeper insights into the impacts of environmental features on phenotypic variation, guiding plant breeders in addressing genotype-by-environment interactions that limit cultivar targeting and genetic progress. We applied an envirotyping-informed (EI) linear mixed-effects model (LMM) to assess climatic drivers and their effects on yield variation across diverse years, elite genotypes, and regions. Our findings identified distinct seasonal environmental types within each region. Air temperature emerged as a key factor, explaining 40 % to 80 % of the phenotypic variation in grain yield. The Midwest region, where the main breeding nursery is located, is primarily limited by temperature, while other regions, such as the Southeast, exhibit different factors affecting yield variations. The inclusion of EI-LMM enabled cultivar ranking based on genetic mean incremental predict value and the calculation of genotype relative importance using analysis of variance (ANOVA). These outcomes connect data from advanced breeding trials and inform decisions about cultivar development, considering regional environmental specificities and within-season variations. Future studies should incorporate genotype-by-environment-by-management interactions to better understand climate adaptation in common beans, bridging the gap between breeding efforts and farmer needs.