Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
FIGURE 1:
Strategies of organic and conventional farming systems, focused on seeds and
variety use.
and phenotypic point of view. Thus they do not fulfill the legislative DUS
requirements and cannot be easily commercialized in the European seed
market. They are gaining interest in Europe, especially for low-input (LI)
and organic agriculture (OA) farming [2]. In the following, we will refer to
organic agriculture (OA) for simplicity, but what is said of OA also applies
to low-input agriculture in which limited quantities of chemical inputs are
used. To achieve coherence with IFOAM principles, many organic farm-
ers are interested in varieties that can be re-sown, that also have intrinsic
genetic diversity because (i) diversity may buffer the variability of cultiva-
tion conditions [3], (ii) genetic diversity enables the farmer to select within
the variety to adapt it to the specific requirements of its farm (specific
markets for example) and (iii) such varieties allow farmers to achieve seed
self-sufficiency, especially for allogamous species.
Figure 1 illustrates the strategies used to optimize organic and con-
ventional systems: the fi rst one is based mainly on the choice of plants
and the other is mainly based on the proper use of inputs. All intermediate
situations are possible in which a balance is established between plant ad-
aptation and inputs. Because professional breeding has primarily targeted
conventional agriculture, available varieties on the market present several
shortcomings in regards to the aims of organic agriculture. The vast ma-
jority of commercial varieties are genetically homogeneous: pure lines for
autogamous species, F1 hybrids for allogamous species and F1 hybrids for
many autogamous vegetable species. Resowing seeds resulting from the
crop of these commercial varieties either will not give a proper crop in the
case of F1 hybrids, or is subjected to a fee for pure lines in some European
Union (EU) countries, such as in France. Furthermore, there are very few
varieties specifi cally bred for organic and low-input conditions. This is the
case for spinach, the crop under discussion in this article [4]. Finally, using
little or no chemicals asks for more resilience from the varieties in order
to best exploit environmental conditions. Therefore, due to the specifi c
conditions of OA (great variability of the environment, agronomic prac-
tices, end-uses, markets), farmers would like to tailor the varieties to their
