Can overcompensation increase crop production?

The two most pressing challenges to agriculture worldwide are feeding a rapidly growing human population and developing more sustainable agricultural practices that do not threaten human and ecosystem health. We address these challenges through research in plant-herbivore interactions, specifically overcompensatory responses in potato to herbivore damage. While herbivory is usually detrimental to most crops, some potato cultivars can overcompensate and increase crop productivity up to two-fold in response to herbivore damage. However, biotic and abiotic factors are known to influence compensatory responses. Here we tested if compensatory plant responses to herbivory increase productivity of potatoes under field conditions along gradients of altitude and landscape simplification in 15 different farms. Our results suggest that compensatory plant responses could double the mean productivity of a potato farm in relation to the productivity of undamaged plants. The compensatory response is best predicted by pest pressure on a farm with potato plants having the maximum productivity when 10% of the tubers are damaged and decreasing in productivity as pest pressure increases. To a lesser extent an interaction between altitude and landscape simplification did affect the compensatory response, suggesting that abiotic factors play an important role in compensation. Our results suggest that overcompensation-based management practices could be used to maximize yields on working potato farms. Further research is required to determine action thresholds (i.e. the damage levels at which pest control needs to be enacted to maximize yields and minimize insecticide use) to develop more sustainable ways of increasing yields in the future.