Breeding Horticultural Crops for Sustainable and Organic Production

Rebecca Grube - University of New Hampshire
email: becky.grube@unh.edu

A significant challenge in identifying or developing varieties that will thrive in organic production systems is defining what constitutes a representative organic system. Certainly, all organic farms include a focus on using organic inputs to foster soil fertility, and the use of cultural practices that promote biodiversity throughout the system, including crop plants, non-crop plants, insects, and microbes. Particularly for small diversified farms in regions where microclimates are highly variable, however, organic farms often differ as much or more from one another as from conventional farms. For each farm, soil structure and fertility, amendments used, biota present, weather/climate, cropping patterns, labor availability, and countless other factors will impact different varieties' performance. To define what ideal varieties for organic systems might look like, we will explore some of the differences between organic and conventional farming systems in both major (California) and minor (New England) horticultural crop production areas and discuss how they may impact breeding for organic systems. What makes varieties consistent, reliable and robust across inherently variable environments? Because of the great diversity among organic farms, a small number of varieties that are universally adapted may not be a realistic goal. Further, it is unclear whether selection of specific traits in isolation is an effective way to breed for complex organic systems. An enhanced focus on place-based breeding to develop regionally-adapted varieties may be not only helpful but essential for organic growers, and may simultaneously provide great benefit to conventional growers located outside major crop production regions.

Other talks in this session: Breeding Horticultural Crops for Sustainable and Organic Production

1. Edith Lammerts Van Bueren: Values in organic agriculture and their consequences for a process-oriented evaluation of plant breeding techniques.
2. Frederick Gmitter: Citrus Genetic Improvement and the Role of Biotechnological Approaches.
3. James Myers: Breeding Open Pollinated (OP) Broccoli Cultivars for Organic Production Systems.
4. Molly Jahn: Organic Seed Partnership: Participatory approaches to vegetable breeding for and in organic systems.
5. Rebecca Grube: Breeding for organic and sustainable systems: one size does not fit all.
6. Stephen Jones: Long-term breeding strategies for sustainable cropping systems.