Production of organic seed for the organic sector (OF0154)

This is the final report of Defra project OF0154. Under the European Union Regulation on the organic production of agricultural products (2092/91), crops raised in organic systems should be grown from organically produced seed or vegetative material. However, the supply of organic seed is limited in the UK and in Europe as a whole, and so by way of derogation, the EU Regulation permits the use of untreated, conventional seed on organic farms only when an appropriate organic variety cannot be sourced. At the start of this project, the derogation period was due to end on 31 December 2000; however, it was extended in June 1999 to 31 December 2003, after which the use of conventional seed will not be permitted on organic farms. To evaluate the current situation regarding organic seed availability, future demand for seed, and the problems restricting the development of an active organic seed production industry in the UK, the following tasks were undertaken with the aim of helping to facilitate the commercial use of organic seed and contributing to the ending of the use of conventional seed on organic farming systems. Objectives 1. Assess the current and potential availability of organic seed, in the UK, elsewhere in Europe and further afield. 2. Develop a forecast of demand for organic seed in the UK over the next 5-10 years. 3. Determine the obstacles that need to be overcome and whether or not they can be dealt with through UK or European co-operation. 4. Highlight problems that need further research input. 5. Produce a report covering the availability of organically produced seed for commercial organic use, including details of species and varieties where further work is needed and recommendations for future actions. Results • There are 251 different varieties of organic seed commercially available to UK organic farmers and growers, 98% of which are vegetable varieties and 1% are cereal varieties. There are no grasses or herbage legumes available. Of the major crops, only 4% of the varieties most commonly used by UK organic producers are currently available as organic seed. • A survey (with only an 11% reply rate) indicated a general European view that organic seed was in short supply in Europe. • Based on 1997 data, demand for organic cereal seed is likely to double, demand for vegetable seed will triple, and demand for grassland seed will increase 7 or 8 times. With the current trend in organic seed production, these demands will not be met at the end of the derogation period unless a massive increase in production takes place. • The problems associated with organic seed production expressed by fourteen seed companies in the UK could be broadly placed within three categories: 1) Marketing, 2) Technical and 3) Standards. Many were only perceived problems (not actual ones) that could be overcome through education, training and discussion. • This study has shown that organic seed production must go ahead and that there are no real obstacles to cause delay. Comments and recommendations for future actions 1. Press ahead with organic seed production. 2. More rigorous policing of the current derogation is required. 3. Make a rapid commitment not to extend the current derogation. 4. Major improvements are required in organic variety testing to identify which varieties should be produced as organic seed. 5. Further work is required on pest, disease and weed problems specifically related to organic seed production. 6. Research is required on the standards of other European countries and third countries. 7. MAFF census data should include organic agriculture and horticulture information

Elm Farm Research Centre Bulletin 82 February 2006

Regular newsletter with technical updates from the Organic Advisory Service Issue covers: organic sector payments, dietary health choices, avian influenza vaccination, tradable quotas, feeding cities, sewage sludge, organic aquaculture, organic poultry, biodiversity and productivity research, organic winter wheat varieties, linking farmers and scientists, Interreg Project, RAFAEL energy use greenhouse gas emissions food and farming

Elm Farm Research Centre Bulletin 79 July 2005

Regular newletter from Elm Farm Research Centre (EFRC)covering research, technical and policy articles, views and comment

A participatory approach to variety trials for organic systems

A participatory research methodology was used to compare the performance of UK wheat varieties under organic conditions. Plots of three breadmaking winter wheat varieties (Hereward, Solstice and Xi19) and a mixture (1:1:1) of the varieties were grown at 19 UK farms in two seasons (2003/04 and 2004/05). Meas-urements were taken of growth habit, yield and grain quality. Grain yields in both seasons showed significant site by variety interactions, although the variation among sites was greater than among varieties in both instances. Wheat grown at Western sites was significantly shorter and higher-yielding than that grown at Eastern sites in 2003/04 but significantly taller in 2004/05. As with grain yield, greater variation among site than variety was found in the Hagberg Falling Number and protein concentra-tion results in both seasons. The results from the two years of trials illustrate the variability of organic systems and the difficulty in selecting a single variety suitable for organic farms

Evolutionary breeding of wheat for low input systems

Genetically diverse Composite Cross Populations (CCPs) may be useful in environmentally variable low-input systems as an alternative to pure varieties. They are formed by assembling seed stocks with diverse evolutionary origins, recombining these stocks by hybridisation, bulking the F1 progeny, and subsequent natural selection of the progeny in suc-cessive natural cropping environments. CCPs derived from either 10 high yielding parents (YCCPs), 12 high quality parents (QCCPs), or all 22 parents (YQCCPs), were grown at four sites (2 organic, 2 conventional) in the UK. The YCCPs out yielded the QCCPs, which had higher protein concentrations and Hagberg falling numbers. Although the CCPs performed within the range of the parents, they often performed better than the mean of the parents

Wheat populations: population performance and stability in organic and non-organic environments

Twenty winter wheat varieties were used as parents in a half diallel crossing programme for the production of wheat populations and physical mixtures that were then grown in field trials at two non-organic and two organic sites over three years in England. Yields of the populations and mixtures were compared with those of the relevant varieties grown as pure stands. In general, there was an improvement in yielding ability in the populations which was achieved while maintaining a high level of stability across environments. Potential improvements through selection or introduction of broader based populations are discussed

Spelling Progress Bulletin 2. Spelling Irregularity, Spelling Reform, and Learning to Read Meaningfully, a Commentary

Purposes: 1. To promote continued research on the writing system (orthography) and word perception in reading. 2. To translate research for effective instruction in classroom situations. Topics include: perceptual learning, factors in word perception; relationships between intonation and perception, between phonic rules and word perception, between perception and other facets of reading; phonemic and morphemic bases of spellings; methodology. Dr. John Downing (Editor) announces a new national bilingual journal devoted to reading. It is called Reading-CanadaLecture, and is a refereed quarterly journal which aims to improve communication between educators within Canada and between Canadians and colleagues in other countries. R-C-L also will provide a forum between English speaking and French speaking educators whose mutual concern is the improvement of reading instruction in these two languages. We envisage that R-C-L will be read mainly by classroom teachers, but that there will be other readers such as school administrators, consultants, parents, university faculty members, etc. R-C-L will be open to all points of view regarding reading theory and practice. Articles will relate to all levels: pre-school, elementary, secondary, college and adult. We are currently particularly interested in receiving manuscripts on themes of practical concern to classroom teachers and clinicians. Articles will be published in full in the original language of the author, either English or French. In addition there will be a summary in the other language. R-C-L welcomes articles in either English or French from authors in any country in the world. The fluent reading process, according to current psycholinguistic theory (Goodman 1967, Smith 1973, involves less emphasis on graphic-visual characteristics and more emphasis on semantics and text structure. Furthermore, much research is currently being generated to demonstrate that reading involves an interaction of the various levels of language and the background knowledge of the reader in constructing meaning (Center for the Study of Reading [1]). Thus, the focus of reading instruction must be on comprehension. However, the beginning reader must learn to crack the orthographic code as part of (but not as the essence of) learning to read. [2] Yet, beginning reading would involve more spelling-sound relationships than would fluent reading (Shuy 1977). In considering spelling reform, two questions need to be answered: (1) Is the English spelling system the most "optimal" for learning to read? (2) Is spelling reform the only step toward literacy improvement? In other words, until spelling reform is achieved, how can teachers facilitate reading of traditional orthography? Chomsky (1973) claimed that the English writing system is predictable because it captures the abstract underlying phonological structure of words as well as the meaningful relationships among related words: Thus, the silent g of malign is related to the pronounced g in malignant. Likewise, the schwa sound of o in composition is related to the o in compose. The orthography preserves the meaningful relationships of these words as an assistance to the fluent reader who focuses on meaning rather than on phonetic details: While many sets of words follow predictable phonological alternations, some experimental evidence has questioned the psychological reality of some of the phonological processes claimed by Chomsky and Halle (1968). (See Steinberg (1973) and Ohala (1974).) Furthermore, many of the elements of traditional orthography have little psychological basis, as they were the result of linguistic and cultural history (Barnitz 1980). [3] Thus, English spelling is certainly not as optimal as originally claimed in Chomsky and Halle (1968). Would a more direct phonemic alphabet facilitate learning to read? Cross-cultural and crosslinguistic research suggests that the regularity of fit between phonological systems and writing systems facilitates, learning to decode spelling into sound as part of beginning reading (Downing 1973, Barnitz 1978. Furthermore, evidence from research on transitional writing systems suggests the role of regularity in learning to read (Downing 1965, Gleitman and Rozin 1973) However, an overemphasis on decoding is not the essence of reading (Goodman 1967). Yet, regularity of writing systems does greatly help the reading learning process. The second major question will be answered briefly. Until total spelling reform occurs -despite the many resistances (c.f. Stubbs 1980) -children still need to be taught the meaningful reading process, regardless of the orthography. For decoding is only a small part of the learning to read process. Goodman 1967, Shafer 1979. As traditional orthography still survives, how can teachers circumvent the problems of "irregularity." Here are only a few suggestions: (1) Emphasize the total language-meaning relationships in reading instruction. This can be done, for example, by using the Language Experience Approach (Stouffer 1980, Veatch et al. 1979. (See also the many reports from the Center for the Study of Reading). (2) Develop word attack skills within the context of meaningful comprehension. (3) Using natural language, provide as much regularity as possible in teaching beginning reading. Begin with regularities, then move to irregularities (Bloomfield 1942), but emphasize the total reading process. (4) As the meaningful relationships among many words are preserved in traditional orthography (malign-malignant), some aspects of these may be introduced for older readers. However, not all relationships have psychological reality. Instructional research is needed here. These suggestions alone will not solve all the literacy problems. Of course, spelling reform will be of assistance. However, until and even after spelling reform does occur, teachers must emphasize meaning in reading instruction. Footnotes Justification There appear to be two justifications of this study. First, studies of the phonetic pronunciation of word elements at each reader level provide the basis for determining the point at which certain phonetic elements may be introduced for systematic study. Second, studies of phonetic structure may provide s basis for deriving readability formulae. Two current reviews of readability studies indicate that this element is not a part of any such formula now available [9; 14]. Limitations The words analyzed were taken from a single vocabulary study [8]. These appeared in at least ten of the fourteen different aeries of basal readers. Only base forms and compound words were selected for analysis [8]. Reader levels studies ranged from primer through third. The syllable was the unit used for analysis. Both initial and final consonant phonograms were analyzed and tabulated. Syllabication and respellings for pronunciation were based on Webster's New International Dictionary Definitions Terminology used in this study is defined as follows: In 1950, Oaks reported "A Study of the Vowel Situations in a Primary (1) "short" vowel principle in closed syllables (2) "long" vowel principle in syllables ending with a final e (3) "long" (single) vowel principle in open accented syllables Oaks concluded that the recognition of vowel digraphs should be systematically taught at the primary level for two reasons: (1) there are several types of digraphs, and (2) two letters frequently represent diphthongs. Among the indirectly related studies are those of Spache [28], Dolch [16; Summary: The studies reviewed emphasized the unphonetic character of our language. Many different sounds were found for one phonogram. Some were found to have as many as eleven pronunciations Procedure The vocabulary used for this study was taken from the Betts' Primary Reading Vocabulary Studies [9], used also by Oaks in A Study of the Vowel Situation in a Primary Reading Vocabulary The analysis of the vocabulary entailed the following steps. First, words were listed by reader level, and the pronunciation of each consonant phonogram was recorded. Second, the position of the consonant phonogram in the syllable, whether initial or final, was then tabulated. All tabulations were made in terms of the syllable in the word. Third, from these data were obtained the incidence of consonant letters, digraphs, trigraphs, blends, and other consonant situations. (1) A total of 1,573 single letter consonants, 38.7% of the consonant situations, appeared in the initial parts of the syllables. (2) A total of 1,203 single letter consonants, 29.6% of the consonant situations, appeared in the final parts of the syllables. (3) Single letter consonants appeared at all reader levels in both initial and final parts of the syllables. b. Of the consonant situations in the study, 396, or 9.8% of all consonant situations, were consonant digraphs. Summary of Results (1) The number of consonant digraphs introduced in the initial parts of the syllables was 122, or 3% of the consonant situations. (2) The number of consonant digraphs introduced in the final parts of the syllables was 274, or 68% of the consonant situations. (3) Consonant digraphs appeared at all reader levels in both initial and final positions in the syllables, c. There were twenty-six consonant trigraphs, comprising .6% of the consonant situations, identified in the vocabulary. (1) All trigraphs appeared in the final parts of the syllables. (2) Trigraphs were introduced at first-reader level and were used at all succeeding levels. d. Consonant blends were classified as two and three-letter blends. There were 613 two-letter blends, comprising 15% of the consonant situations, in the study. Totalling 53, the three-letter blends accounted for only 1.3% of the consonant situations. (1) A total of 336 two-letter blends, 8.2% of the consonant situations, was used in the initial parts of the syllables. Only thirty-two three-letter blends, comprising .8% of the total consonant situations, were used in initial positions. (2) There were 277 two-letter blends, or 6.8% of all consonant situations in the study, in the final parts of the syllables. Twenty-one three-letter blends were tabulated in the final parts of the syllables. This was only .5% of all consonant situations. (3) Two-letter blends were identified at all reader levels, three-letter blends appeared at first-reader level and were used at all succeeding levels. e. In this study, 130 syllabic consonants and 16 syllabic blends were identified. The syllabic consonants comprised 3.3%, and the syllabic blends .4% of the total consonant situations. (1) Syllabic consonants and syllabic blends s appeared only in final syllables of words. (2) Syllabic consonants appeared at all levels; syllabic blends were introduced at firstreader level and used at all succeeding levels, f. In the "miscellaneous" situations classification, there were 52 consonant situations. (1) One "miscellaneous" phonogram, ear [3] as in earth, appeared three times in the initial syllable or parts of syllables. This total comprised .1% of the total situations. (2) Thirty, .8% of the total consonant situations, appeared in the medial parts of syllables. (3) Nineteen, .5% of the total consonant situations, appeared in final positions in the syllables. (4) "Miscellaneous" phonograms appeared in initial positions at second-reader level, and in medial and final positions at all reader levels. 2. Of the consonant and vowel-colored r situations analyzed in this study, 606 involved letter r. These accounted for 14.9% of all consonant situations tabulated. a. A total of 264 letter r phonograms, 6.5% of all consonant situations, appeared in initial syllabic positions. b. Thirty vowel-colored r [3] situations (e.g., bird), comprising .7% of the total consonant situations, appeared in medial positions. c. There were 310 letter r situations, 7.7% of all consonant situations in the vocabulary, identified in final parts of syllables. d. Letter r situations appeared at all reader levels encompassed by this study. 3. There were 281 consonant phonograms, 6.9% of the total consonant situations, containing silent letters. a. A total of 74 consonant situations, appearing in the initial parts of the syllables, contained silent letters. This was 1.9% of the total consonant situations. b. There were 207 consonant phonograms, 5% of all consonant situations appearing in the study, involving silent-letter situations which appeared in final positions

Spelling Progress Bulletin Spelling Irregularity, Spelling Reform, and Learning to Read Meaningfully, a Commentary

Purposes: 1. To promote continued research on the writing system (orthography) and word perception in reading. 2. To translate research for effective instruction in classroom situations. Topics include: perceptual learning, factors in word perception; relationships between intonation and perception, between phonic rules and word perception, between perception and other facets of reading; phonemic and morphemic bases of spellings; methodology. Dr. John Downing (Editor) announces a new national bilingual journal devoted to reading. It is called Reading-CanadaLecture, and is a refereed quarterly journal which aims to improve communication between educators within Canada and between Canadians and colleagues in other countries. R-C-L also will provide a forum between English speaking and French speaking educators whose mutual concern is the improvement of reading instruction in these two languages. We envisage that R-C-L will be read mainly by classroom teachers, but that there will be other readers such as school administrators, consultants, parents, university faculty members, etc. R-C-L will be open to all points of view regarding reading theory and practice. Articles will relate to all levels: pre-school, elementary, secondary, college and adult. We are currently particularly interested in receiving manuscripts on themes of practical concern to classroom teachers and clinicians. Articles will be published in full in the original language of the author, either English or French. In addition there will be a summary in the other language. R-C-L welcomes articles in either English or French from authors in any country in the world. The fluent reading process, according to current psycholinguistic theory (Goodman 1967, Smith 1973, involves less emphasis on graphic-visual characteristics and more emphasis on semantics and text structure. Furthermore, much research is currently being generated to demonstrate that reading involves an interaction of the various levels of language and the background knowledge of the reader in constructing meaning (Center for the Study of Reading [1]). Thus, the focus of reading instruction must be on comprehension. However, the beginning reader must learn to crack the orthographic code as part of (but not as the essence of) learning to read. [2] Yet, beginning reading would involve more spelling-sound relationships than would fluent reading (Shuy 1977). In considering spelling reform, two questions need to be answered: (1) Is the English spelling system the most "optimal" for learning to read? (2) Is spelling reform the only step toward literacy improvement? In other words, until spelling reform is achieved, how can teachers facilitate reading of traditional orthography? Chomsky (1973) claimed that the English writing system is predictable because it captures the abstract underlying phonological structure of words as well as the meaningful relationships among related words: Thus, the silent g of malign is related to the pronounced g in malignant. Likewise, the schwa sound of o in composition is related to the o in compose. The orthography preserves the meaningful relationships of these words as an assistance to the fluent reader who focuses on meaning rather than on phonetic details: While many sets of words follow predictable phonological alternations, some experimental evidence has questioned the psychological reality of some of the phonological processes claimed by Chomsky and Halle (1968). (See Steinberg (1973) and Ohala (1974).) Furthermore, many of the elements of traditional orthography have little psychological basis, as they were the result of linguistic and cultural history (Barnitz 1980). [3] Thus, English spelling is certainly not as optimal as originally claimed in Chomsky and Halle (1968). Would a more direct phonemic alphabet facilitate learning to read? Cross-cultural and crosslinguistic research suggests that the regularity of fit between phonological systems and writing systems facilitates, learning to decode spelling into sound as part of beginning reading (Downing 1973, Barnitz 1978. Furthermore, evidence from research on transitional writing systems suggests the role of regularity in learning to read (Downing 1965, Gleitman and Rozin 1973) However, an overemphasis on decoding is not the essence of reading (Goodman 1967). Yet, regularity of writing systems does greatly help the reading learning process. The second major question will be answered briefly. Until total spelling reform occurs -despite the many resistances (c.f. Stubbs 1980) -children still need to be taught the meaningful reading process, regardless of the orthography. For decoding is only a small part of the learning to read process. Goodman 1967, Shafer 1979. As traditional orthography still survives, how can teachers circumvent the problems of "irregularity." Here are only a few suggestions: (1) Emphasize the total language-meaning relationships in reading instruction. This can be done, for example, by using the Language Experience Approach (Stouffer 1980, Veatch et al. 1979. (See also the many reports from the Center for the Study of Reading). (2) Develop word attack skills within the context of meaningful comprehension. (3) Using natural language, provide as much regularity as possible in teaching beginning reading. Begin with regularities, then move to irregularities (Bloomfield 1942), but emphasize the total reading process. (4) As the meaningful relationships among many words are preserved in traditional orthography (malign-malignant), some aspects of these may be introduced for older readers. However, not all relationships have psychological reality. Instructional research is needed here. These suggestions alone will not solve all the literacy problems. Of course, spelling reform will be of assistance. However, until and even after spelling reform does occur, teachers must emphasize meaning in reading instruction. Footnotes Justification There appear to be two justifications of this study. First, studies of the phonetic pronunciation of word elements at each reader level provide the basis for determining the point at which certain phonetic elements may be introduced for systematic study. Second, studies of phonetic structure may provide s basis for deriving readability formulae. Two current reviews of readability studies indicate that this element is not a part of any such formula now available [9; 14]. Limitations The words analyzed were taken from a single vocabulary study The syllable was the unit used for analysis. Both initial and final consonant phonograms were analyzed and tabulated. Syllabication and respellings for pronunciation were based on Webster's New International Dictionary Definitions Terminology used in this study is defined as follows: In 1950, Oaks reported "A Study of the Vowel Situations in a Primary (1) "short" vowel principle in closed syllables (2) "long" vowel principle in syllables ending with a final e (3) "long" (single) vowel principle in open accented syllables Oaks concluded that the recognition of vowel digraphs should be systematically taught at the primary level for two reasons: (1) there are several types of digraphs, and (2) two letters frequently represent diphthongs. Among the indirectly related studies are those of Spache [28], Dolch [16; Summary: The studies reviewed emphasized the unphonetic character of our language. Many different sounds were found for one phonogram. Some were found to have as many as eleven pronunciations Procedure The vocabulary used for this study was taken from the Betts' Primary Reading Vocabulary Studies The analysis of the vocabulary entailed the following steps. First, words were listed by reader level, and the pronunciation of each consonant phonogram was recorded. Second, the position of the consonant phonogram in the syllable, whether initial or final, was then tabulated. All tabulations were made in terms of the syllable in the word. Third, from these data were obtained the incidence of consonant letters, digraphs, trigraphs, blends, and other consonant situations. (1) A total of 1,573 single letter consonants, 38.7% of the consonant situations, appeared in the initial parts of the syllables. (2) A total of 1,203 single letter consonants, 29.6% of the consonant situations, appeared in the final parts of the syllables. (3) Single letter consonants appeared at all reader levels in both initial and final parts of the syllables. b. Of the consonant situations in the study, 396, or 9.8% of all consonant situations, were consonant digraphs. Summary of Results (1) The number of consonant digraphs introduced in the initial parts of the syllables was 122, or 3% of the consonant situations. (2) The number of consonant digraphs introduced in the final parts of the syllables was 274, or 68% of the consonant situations. (3) Consonant digraphs appeared at all reader levels in both initial and final positions in the syllables, c. There were twenty-six consonant trigraphs, comprising .6% of the consonant situations, identified in the vocabulary. (1) All trigraphs appeared in the final parts of the syllables. (2) Trigraphs were introduced at first-reader level and were used at all succeeding levels. d. Consonant blends were classified as two and three-letter blends. There were 613 two-letter blends, comprising 15% of the consonant situations, in the study. Totalling 53, the three-letter blends accounted for only 1.3% of the consonant situations. (1) A total of 336 two-letter blends, 8.2% of the consonant situations, was used in the initial parts of the syllables. Only thirty-two three-letter blends, comprising .8% of the total consonant situations, were used in initial positions. (2) There were 277 two-letter blends, or 6.8% of all consonant situations in the study, in the final parts of the syllables. Twenty-one three-letter blends were tabulated in the final parts of the syllables. This was only .5% of all consonant situations. (3) Two-letter blends were identified at all reader levels, three-letter blends appeared at first-reader level and were used at all succeeding levels. e. In this study, 130 syllabic consonants and 16 syllabic blends were identified. The syllabic consonants comprised 3.3%, and the syllabic blends .4% of the total consonant situations. (1) Syllabic consonants and syllabic blends s appeared only in final syllables of words. (2) Syllabic consonants appeared at all levels; syllabic blends were introduced at firstreader level and used at all succeeding levels, f. In the "miscellaneous" situations classification, there were 52 consonant situations. (1) One "miscellaneous" phonogram, ear [3] as in earth, appeared three times in the initial syllable or parts of syllables. This total comprised .1% of the total situations. (2) Thirty, .8% of the total consonant situations, appeared in the medial parts of syllables. (3) Nineteen, .5% of the total consonant situations, appeared in final positions in the syllables. (4) "Miscellaneous" phonograms appeared in initial positions at second-reader level, and in medial and final positions at all reader levels. 2. Of the consonant and vowel-colored r situations analyzed in this study, 606 involved letter r. These accounted for 14.9% of all consonant situations tabulated. a. A total of 264 letter r phonograms, 6.5% of all consonant situations, appeared in initial syllabic positions. b. Thirty vowel-colored r [3] situations (e.g., bird), comprising .7% of the total consonant situations, appeared in medial positions. c. There were 310 letter r situations, 7.7% of all consonant situations in the vocabulary, identified in final parts of syllables. d. Letter r situations appeared at all reader levels encompassed by this study. 3. There were 281 consonant phonograms, 6.9% of the total consonant situations, containing silent letters. a. A total of 74 consonant situations, appearing in the initial parts of the syllables, contained silent letters. This was 1.9% of the total consonant situations. b. There were 207 consonant phonograms, 5% of all consonant situations appearing in the study, involving silent-letter situations which appeared in final positions