New models for plant breeding: Key elements for collaboration within the food chain

Summary

As the financial threshold for cost-effective breeding continues to be raised, increasingly more crops are becoming 'too small' for breeding. The long-term consequence is that production of these crops will become increasingly difficult, because the availablevarieties will not be adapted to future changes in the cultivation system (new methods,new diseases, etc). The question is how to develop alternative crop breeding models for small markets.This is not only a problem for the organic sector, but increasingly also for minor crops within the conventional sector. To address this problem, the Louis Bolk Institute (LBI) is developing innovative approaches to funding and organizing crop breeding for small markets. For various arable crops the LBI has initiated collaborative breeding programmes that are based on a multi-actor approach, involving not only commercial breeding companies but also other important players within the food chain, such as processors and traders. Each of these initiatives is tailored to the specific structure of the sector in question, and thus cannot easily be 'translated' to other crops. To facilitate this 'translation', we have compared and analyzed various breeding initiatives for organic production of potato, spring wheat and cucumber. In this project, which was funded by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs, we have identified various key elements that are crucial for the success of such initiatives.