Breeding Horticultural Crops for Sustainable and Organic Production

James Myers - Oregon State University
email: myersja@hort.oregonstate.edu

Plant breeders can seek to understand what makes a particular production system unique, and base their breeding strategy on selection for traits that are associated with that uniqueness. Alternatively, breeders can breed by selecting for cultivars that perform well in the production system in question without understanding specific constraints. We have developed a farmer participatory method designed to develop breeding populations for outcrossed crops. Specifically, we are developing improved open pollinated broccoli cultivars that are adapted to organic production systems. Because essentially all broccoli cultivar development is based on F1 hybrids, genetic improvement of open pollinated cultivars have been neglected. Organic fresh market growers would like to have open pollinated cultivars of which they could save their own seed that have the improved quality traits found in F1 hybrids. Our population was initiated by allowing OSU broccoli inbreds and commercial hybrids to randomly inter-mate. This was followed by three cycles of random mating and selection for quality traits under conventional production. Farmer participatory breeding was initiated by sending a portion of seed to any organic farmer willing to grow and select the population, then return a portion of seed to us, where it was blended for the next season. Three cycles of selection have been practiced in this manner. Some of the difficulties encountered involve 1) contamination by other cole crops in farmers' fields, 2) lack of follow-through by some farmers who are growing in areas that are marginal for broccoli seed production, and 3) potential for seed borne disease to become an issue. We are now at a point where inbreds may be extracted from the population and/or trimming of phenotypic extremes can be practiced to develop and OP cultivar.

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.