Maize Genetics Cooperation Newsletter

Maize Genetics Cooperation Newsletter, a compendium of notes and information on working research intended to be shared throughout the maize research community

Maize Genetics Cooperation Newsletter

Maize Genetics Cooperation Newsletter, a compendium of notes and information on working research intended to be shared throughout the maize research community

Organic plant breeding

This report was presented at the UK Organic Research 2002 Conference. To a major extent, organic farming depends currently on plant and animal varieties that have been bred for non-organic farming and that are often not suited to organic production. This position is inconsistent with a holistic approach to organic agriculture. Organically-bred plant varieties are needed to develop both the potential of organic agriculture and its integrity. A first attempt at developing a concept for organic plant breeding methodology has been proposed. A novel approach to breeding for organic production has also been started. Further development needs a parallel approach to animal breeding for organic systems

International Symposium on Evolutionary Breeding in Cereals

Evolutionary plant breeding has a long history, but has so far not become part of mainstream breeding research, nor has it been implemented in practice to any substantial degree. However, over the last decade, research in evolutionary plant breeding has markedly intensified. For example, there are currently major research projects on-going in this area, including the EU funded project SOLIBAM, the Wheat Breeding LINK project in the UK, and the Danish Biobreed project. Also, a new 3-year international research project called COBRA on this topic is due to start in March 2013. Funded by the CORE Organic 2 Eranet the project brings together over 40 partner organizations from 18 European countries. In addition, interest in evolutionary plant breeding is growing among farmers, breeders and policy makers. In fact, there are currently encouraging developments in the imminent revision of seed legislation in Europe that could lead to more room for evolutionary plant breeding approaches in the future. This renewed interest in evolutionary plant breeding is partly due to the recognition that mainstream plant breeding is limited in terms of its engagement with end users, i.e. farmers and growers. More urgently however, effects of climate change on agricultural production have become more noticeable and there is also a growing awareness of increasing resource constraints; together, these will create more stressful growing conditions for agricultural crops. With this background, it is now being recognized that crops need to be able to cope with more variable, contrasting, fluctuating, and generally more unpredictable growing conditions. To be able to deal with this large and increasing environmental variability, plant breeding needs to become more decentralized and diversified. Evolutionary plant breeding offers great potential in this respect. The contributions collated from this symposium explore this potential as well as the limitations of evolutionary plant breeding. While they only show a part of the on-going research activities in Europe, we hope that these proceedings provide inspiration both for further research and for implementation in practice

M3.5 ‐ Organic plant breeding in a systems‐based approach and integration of organic plant breeding in value chain partnerships

Developing organic breeding is a key challenge for the organic sector. It is necessary to better adapt varieties to the specific needs of the organic sector (disease resistance, taste, weed suppressing ability, etc). It is also important to enable the organic sector to face the requirements of the New Organic Regulation (EU 2018/848). From 2036, exemptions to the use non‐organic seeds will not be granted any more (Article 53, Regulation 2018/848). The active participation of breeders, farmers, processors, retailers and traders is crucial to develop organic breeding. They all play a critical role and share the responsibility in upscaling organic plant breeding and ensuring future food security, food quality and climate robust agriculture as well as integrity of the value chain. Even consumers could take part in supporting organic plant breeding with informed purchases. On the 12 of February 2019, IFOAM EU, the Louis Bolk Institute (Netherlands) and FiBL Switzerland co‐organized a workshop ‘Organic plant breeding in a system‐based approach and integration of organic plant breeding in value chain partnership’ as part of the Horizon 2020 project LIVESEED. The workshop took place at the largest organic trade fair at Nürnberg Messe biofach to reach out to different actors of the organic sector. The main objective of this workshop was to gather interested stakeholders across the value chain to discuss the responsibilities and their potential concrete engagements in facilitating organic plant breeding. Organized as a world café workshop 1, the participants had the opportunity to discuss three main issues: - Why should different value chain actors support organic plant breeding? - The advantage of organic plant breeding for the value chain (farmer, processors, traders). - The advantage of organic plant breeding for consumers and society (local and global). This report describes in detail the main conclusion of the discussions held during this workshop

Future breeding for organic and low-input agriculture: integrating values and modern breeding tools for improving robustness

Organic production and also the attention for plant breeding for organic agriculture is still increasing in Europe. The question often raised is how much does plant breeding for the organic sector differ from modern plant breeding and does a ban on GMO also include refraining from molecular marker assisted selection (MAS)? In this paper I will first elaborate on the values in organic agriculture and it related systems approach as a central focus in organic agriculture and will then discuss in which way molecular marker assisted selection can be of use for plant breeding for organic and low-input agriculture

Participatory plant breeding in Denmark

Plant breeding gets more and more concentrated on a couple of multinational companies, and financing plant breeding via the traditional royalty founded certification system exclusive for the specific needs in organic farming is not profitable in most field crops. The seed certification system only allows pure line varieties, and the royalty funded breeding system tend to focus on monogenic resistance with s short durability on the marked. To develop new plant genetic material for organic farmers with durable stability and resistance, the Danish Organic Farmers Association has initiated a participatory plant breeding program with the aim to develop varieties and diverse populations for the organic farmers. The project is based within the advisory service in the organisation in cooperation with plant breeding research projects. In this way, it is the hope to overcome the economic and legal barrier for implementation of crop diversity and targeted selection for the different needs in the diverse organic sector

COBRA: a new European research project for organic plant breeding

Development of organic plant breeding and seed production will have a valuable impact on organic plant production. Breeding of plant material adapted for organic agriculture is crucial in order to cope with stresses such as climate change, weeds and seed borne diseases. Conventional varieties may not meet the specific needs of organic agriculture. The use of plant material adapted to conditions of organic agriculture will have a positive effect on the productivity and sustainability of organic crop production

Plant breeding for organic farming: current status and problems in Europe

Compendium is a part of Deliverable 4 of 6th FP SSA project “Environmental friendly food production system: requirements for plant breeding and seed production” (ENVIRFOOD) and contains information about current status and problems in EU regarding to organic plant breeding