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How to optimize fruit and berry cultivar selection for organic farmers ? A comparison of European approaches.

Warlop, Francois; Timmermans, B.G.H.; Brouwer, Gerjan; Nybom, Hilde; LATEUR, MARC; Kelderer, Markus; Weibel, Franco; Lindhard Pedersen, Hanne; GARCIN, Alain; Haug, Philipp and DAPENA, ENRIQUE (2014) How to optimize fruit and berry cultivar selection for organic farmers ? A comparison of European approaches. In: ECOFRUIT 2014 proceedings.

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Summary

Most of the currently grown commercial fruit cultivars remain unsuitable to low-input or sustainable organic farming systems. The major reason is that they have been developed and selected under high input cultivation, and without sufficient attention to susceptibility to pests and diseases. Some of these cultivars are nevertheless marketed as resistant because they carry genetic markers for major resistance genes but these are unfortunately prone to break-down (most of apple resistant cultivars relay only on the Vf). As a result, new fruit cultivars tend to reveal unexpected and often undesirable traits when grown in commercial organic orchards, and thus fail to bring about the much needed expansion in organic production and market availability. However, research is ongoing, and some institutions in Europe have established specific approaches in their breeding programs for testing new selections and cultivars under entirely organic conditions – sometimes including also evaluation of storage capability, consumer acceptance or suitable characteristics for juice and cider processing.
This paper gives an overview of approaches developed in some European countries, their characteristics, objectives and results. It shows a number of different ways to address a difficult topic. We conclude that it is very desirable to – on a European level – exchange results and ideas to further improve the testing systems, and to increase the distribution of promising cultivars for the European organic fruit sector.


EPrint Type:Conference paper, poster, etc.
Type of presentation:Paper
Keywords:organic farming, variety testing, fruit growing, low input, sustainable orchard
Subjects: Crop husbandry > Breeding, genetics and propagation
Crop husbandry > Crop health, quality, protection
Knowledge management > Research methodology and philosophy
Research affiliation: Denmark > AU - Aarhus University
Belgium > Centre Wallon de Recherche Agronomique (CRA-W) (Gembloux)
Netherlands > Louis Bolk Institute
Germany > Fördergemeinschaft Ökologischer Obstbau - FÖKO
Spain > SERIDA (Servicio Regional de Investigación y Desarrollo Agroalimentario del Principado de Asturias)
France > CTIFL - Centre Technique Interprofessionnel des Fruits et Légumes
France > GRAB - Groupe de Recherche en Agriculture biologique
Switzerland > FiBL - Research Institute of Organic Agriculture Switzerland > Crops > Special crops > Fruit
Italy > Laimburg Research Centre for Agriculture and Forestry of BZ Province
Sweden > Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU)
Deposited By: WARLOP, François
ID Code:28589
Deposited On:13 May 2015 12:49
Last Modified:22 May 2020 14:07
Document Language:English
Status:Published
Refereed:Not peer-reviewed

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