Breeding Horticultural Crops for Sustainable and Organic Production

Stephen Jones - Washington State University
email: joness@wsu.edu

Involving farmers more directly in University-Assisted Participatory/Evolutionary breeding strategies and the need for dedicated breeding programs for unique systems such as organic or very low input will be discussed. Involving farmers in developing their own plant varieties will lead to the development of specific adaptation for local environments and/or systems. It will also insure that if farmers wish to grow and retain seed for planting they may do so legally. Evolutionary breeding was described by Coit Suneson at UC Davis in the 1950's. We have modified the approach by including a participatory element. This type of breeding strategy is designed for long term stability and sustainability. It is common to hear organic agriculture criticized as low-yielding. We show that poorly adapted cultivars (bred under high input conditions) are partially responsible for lower yields often found in organic farming systems when compared with conventional farming systems. An analysis of variance for wheat yields between paired organic and conventional systems showed highly significant (P < 0.001) genotype x system interactions in four of five locations. Genotypic ranking analysis showed no correlation between rankings for yield in four of five locations. This indicates that increasing yield in organic systems through breeding will require direct selection within organic systems rather than indirect selection in conventional systems. Direct selection in organic systems produced yields 15%, 7%, 31% and 5% higher than the yields resulting from indirect selection for locations one through four, respectively. With cultivars bred in, and adapted to, the unique conditions inherent in alternative systems such as organic, these systems will be better able to realize their full potential as high-yielding alternatives to conventional agriculture.

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.