Mixtures have been frequently used for objectives other than disease control. Bowden et al. (2001) listed three advantages cultivar mixtures can provide: stabilization of yield (particularly when GxE, i.e. genotype by environment interaction effects account for a significant variation in yield), compensation effects (a strong variety compensates for a weak or injured variety) and disease control. Disease control may help to achieve the other two goals, but there also can be a direct effect of the mixture on yield stabilization and compensation.

Potential disadvantages of mixing cultivars also need to be considered. One practical disadvantage is the added time and cost involved in mixing. For example, some farmers lack the equipment to adequately mix seed. Incompatibility of the varietal components is another potential concern, especially with regard to plant height and maturity. This problem restricts the options for mixtures to components with similar heights and maturation times (Bowden et al. 2001). Another potentially important agronomic disadvantage of mixtures is the loss of the opportunity to adjust management practices to the specific requirements of each variety (e.g., plant density, fertilization, planting date, etc.)

Marketing restrictions and processing quality are often cited as major limitations to the use of mixtures. However, cultivars of the same market class are often bulked during handling and shipping. The German experience with barley demonstrated that adequate malting quality could be maintained in the face of widespread deployment of cultivars mixtures (Wolfe 1992).

Conclusion
For a particular host-pathogen system, it is very important to thoroughly test if mixtures can be useful for suppression of disease and stabilization of yield. Experimentation with simple mixtures of susceptible and resistant genotypes can be very helpful for testing whether the three basic mechanisms (dilution, barrier, and induced resistance) are active for that system (Garrett and Mundt 1999). The benefits achieved by cultivation of variety mixtures need to be carefully weighed against the agronomic considerations and requirements of the production system.