Crops need adequate mineral nutrition to ensure optimal growth and yield. Nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) are two major elements that are essential for crop growth. However, situations of N-P colimitation are frequent in agroecosystems. Hence, our ability to optimize crop production under these conditions depends on our ability to analyze and predict the response of crops to colimitation. Traditionally, agronomists rely on the law of the minimum (LM) to manage colimitation situations. This law states that crop growth is constrained by the most limiting element. In contrast, the multiple limitation hypothesis (MLH) argues that crops can adapt by balancing their resource allocation with the best compromise to maximize their growth. These two hypotheses result in contrasting growth response patterns. The aim of the present review is to identify the crop response pattern to N-P colimitation through an assessment of experimental results against a conceptual framework and to report the main mechanism involved in this interaction. Finally, an inventory of existing crop models handling N-P colimitation is presented and possible ways of improvement are proposed. This review allowed us to (1) remind of the published theories used to classify colimitation types, (2) highlight the fact that a large range of crops mostly showed MLH-response patterns, (3) report that the variability in crop response patterns is linked to pedoclimatic variation, (4) identify multiple mechanisms that may be involved in plant adaptation to N-P colimitation, (5) suggest that the interplay between the different mechanisms results in complex responses that are difficult to understand experimentally, (6) report that few models handle N-P colimitation and that most of them rely on the law of the minimum, and (7) recommend possible ways to improve model formalization for a better simulation of crop responses under N-P colimitation.

农作物需要充足的矿物质营养以确保最佳的生长和产量。氮（N）和磷（P）是作物生长必需的两种主要元素。然而，NP共限的情况在农业生态系统中很常见。因此，我们在这些条件下优化作物生产的能力取决于我们分析和预测作物对共限的反应的能力。传统上，农学家依靠最小法则（LM）来管理共限情况。该定律规定作物生长受到最限制元素的限制。相比之下，多重限制假说（MLH）认为，作物可以通过平衡其资源分配与最佳折衷方案来适应，以最大限度地提高其生长。这两种假设导致了截然不同的生长反应模式。本综述的目的是通过根据概念框架评估实验结果来确定作物对 NP 共限制的反应模式，并报告这种相互作用所涉及的主要机制。最后，列出了处理 NP 共限的现有作物模型，并提出了可能的改进方法。这篇综述使我们能够 (1) 想起已发表的用于对共限类型进行分类的理论，(2) 强调了这样一个事实，即大量作物大多表现出 MLH 响应模式，(3) 报告作物响应模式的变异性是与土壤气候变化相关，(4) 识别出可能参与植物对 NP 共限制的适应的多种机制，(5) 表明不同机制之间的相互作用导致难以通过实验理解的复杂反应，(6) 报告很少有模型处理 NP 共限，并且大多数模型依赖于最小值定律，并且（7）建议改进模型形式化的可能方法，以便更好地模拟 NP 共限下的作物响应。