Discussion
In finding that ‘Chardonnay’ leaf traits covary and trade-off along an
intragenotype LES, we contribute a new understanding of how LES traits
covary in one of the world’s most commercially important and widespread
crop species. This finding adds to the few existing studies that have
quantified within-species or -genotype Leaf Economics Spectra in crops
(Gagliardi et al., 2015; Hayes et al., 2019; Martin & Isaac, 2021;
Martin et al., 2017), and complements the extensive literature
documenting the causes and consequences of ecophysiological variation in
grapevines (Keller, 2020). Moreover, our work here contributes to an
understanding of how soil compaction—a critical feature of
agricultural systems globally—is a managed environmental factor,
correlated with crop differentiation along multivariate functional trait
spectra.