Plant breeding for organic and sustainable, low-input agriculture: dealing with genotypeenvironment interactions. Book of Abstracts

Summary

This proceedings summarize the results of the first EUCARPIA symposium on Organic Plant Breeding - Plant breeding for organic and sustainable, low-input agriculture: dealing with genotype-environment interactions - that took place in Wageningen in November 2007. EUCARPIA is the European Association for Research on Plant Breeding.
One of the major constraints in organic farming is that farmers still largely depend on crop varieties produced for conventional farming systems with high inputs of artificial, mineral fertilisers and chemicals for crop defence. Therefore, the organic sector urgently requires breeding programmes for robust varieties, which are better adapted to low-input conditions, with traits such as improved root systems, stronger interspecific competition ability (weed suppression) and yield stability. This symposium will explore alternative strategies to overcome these constraints, hereby also using insight and knowledge from agronomic fields working at a higher aggregation level (i.e. crop level).
The event was organised in cooperation with Cost Action 860 (COST860 - Sustainable low-input cereal production: required varietal characteristics and crop diversity, SUSVAR), the European Consortium of Ecological Plant Breeding ECOPB, ISOFAR and the the Graduate School Production Ecology & Resource Conservationand Wageningen University.