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Abstract
Drought tolerance involves mechanisms operating at different spatial and temporal
scales, from rapid stomatal closure to maintenance of crop yield. We review how short-term
mechanisms are controlled for stabilizing shoot water potential and how long-term
processes have been constrained by evolution or breeding to fit into acclimation strategies
for specific drought scenarios. These short- or long-term feedback processes participate
in trade-offs between carbon accumulation and the risk of deleterious soil water depletion.
Corresponding traits and alleles may therefore have positive or negative effects on
crop yield depending on drought scenarios. We propose an approach that analyzes the
genetic architecture of traits in phenotyping platforms and of yield in tens of field
experiments. A combination of modeling and genomic prediction is then used to estimate
the comparative interests of combinations of alleles depending on drought scenarios.
Hence, drought tolerance is understood probabilistically by estimating the benefit
and risk of each combination of alleles.