Cereal crop diversity: Implications for production and products

Summary

This proceeding comprises papers based on oral and poster presentations at the COST860 - SUSVAR workshop on cereal crop diversity held in La Besse, France, 13-14 June 2006. The main aims of the SUSVAR network are to ensure stable and acceptable yields of good quality for low-input, especially organic, cereal production in Europe. This will be achieved by developing ways to increase and make use of crop diversity, by establishing methods for selecting varieties, lines and populations taking into account genotype-environment interactions and by establishing common methodology for variety testing where appropriate.
The present workshop focused on ways to increase and make use of crop diversity from the
production to the product. As crop diversity often is argued to be an advantage for the grower but a problem for the end user of high quality grain products, the six introductory oral presentations (Topic 0) gave introduction to farmer’s conception of diversity and examples of practical applications of variety mixtures for baking and distilling quality. The remaining part of the workshop was open for poster contributions reflecting the ongoing research within the SUSVAR network on crop diversity. The posters were grouped into four topics: Growing variety mixtures (Topic I), Evolutionary processes in diverse crops (Topic II), Genetic diversity (Topic III) and Variety and species mixtures, diseases and soil (Topic IV). The posters were introduced by a moderator and their contribution is included as an introduction to each topic.