Future breeding for organic and low-input agriculture: integrating values and modern breeding tools for improving robustness

Summary

Organic production and also the attention for plant breeding for organic agriculture is still increasing in Europe.
The question often raised is how much does plant breeding for the organic sector differ from modern plant breeding and does a ban on GMO also include refraining from molecular marker assisted selection (MAS)? In this paper I will first elaborate on the values in organic agriculture and it related systems approach as a central focus in organic agriculture and will then discuss in which way molecular marker assisted selection can be of use for plant breeding for organic and low-input agriculture.