Developments in breeding cereals for organic agriculture

By M. Wolfe, J. P. Baresel, D. Desclaux, I. Goldringer, S. Hoad, G. Kovács, F. Löschenberger, T. Miedaner, H. Østergård, E. V. Bueren. Euphytica, 2008

422 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The need for increased sustainability of performance in cereal varieties, particularly in organic agriculture (OA), is limited by the lack of varieties adapted to organic conditions. Here, the needs for breeding are reviewed in the context of three major marketing types, global, regional, local, in European OA. Currently, the effort is determined, partly, by the outcomes from trials that compare varieties under OA and CA (conventional agriculture) conditions. The differences are sufficiently large and important to warrant an increase in appropriate breeding. The wide range of environments within OA and between years, underlines the need to try to select for specific adaptation in target environments. The difficulty of doing so can be helped by decentralised breeding with farmer participation and the use of crops buffered by variety mixtures or populations. Varieties for OA need efficient nutrient uptake and use and weed competition. These and other characters need to be considered in relation to the OA cropping system over the whole rotation. Positive interactions are needed, such as early crop vigour for nutrient uptake, weed competition and disease resistance. Incorporation of all characteristics into the crop can be helped by diversification within the crop, allowing complementation and compensation among plants. Although the problems of breeding cereals for organic farming systems are large, there is encouraging progress. This lies in applications of ecology to organic crop production, innovations in plant sciences, and the realisation that such progress is central to both OA and CA, because of climate change and the increasing costs of fossil fuels.

Subfields: Plant Science

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Citations in the corpus

First evidence for a major cover crop effect on arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and organic maize growth (2013, background): “By contrast, breeding programs in organic agriculture should focus on crop genotypes that make sustainable use of the available soil bioresources (Wolfe et al. 2008).”
The effect of organic and conventional management on the yield and quality of wheat grown in a long-term field trial (2013, background): “Low input and organic farming systems were usually shown o result in lower and more variable yield as a consequence of much onger crop rotations and reduced fertilizer and pesticide inputs Wolfe et al., 2008).”
The crop yield gap between organic and conventional agriculture (2012, background): “Murphy et al. (2007) showed that varieties used in conventional agriculture are not always the highest yielding varieties in organic systems, something also proposed by Wolfe et al. (2008).”
Annual intercrops: an alternative pathway for sustainable agriculture. (2011, background): “…and Roupakias, 2008; Vlachostergios et al., 2010), but the majority of these varieties cannot face up efficiently problems as pest and fungus pathogens, weed competitiveness, or resource exploitation under organic farming systems (Wolfe et al., 2008; Lammerts van Bueren et al., 2003).”
Efficiency of Plant Breeding (2015, background): “The possibility of selecting varieties for organic agriculture (Wolfe et al., 2008).”
Organic food: What we know (and do not know) about consumers (2010, background): “And ﬁnally, different crop varieties vary in their response to different environmental condi-tions—the Genotype by Environment (G r E) effect 24 — which also inﬂuences product quality and is substantially independent of the type of production system, whether organic or otherwise.”
Breeding for organic agriculture: the example of winter wheat in Austria (2008, background): “Conventional LI trials can be regarded as indirect selection environments for ORG (Wolfe et al. 2008).”