A Participatory Wheat Variety Testing Programme With British Organic Farmers

Summary

In organic farming, crop adaptation to the growing environment and resilience towards changing climate are key in ensuring a sustainable and profitable agriculture in the absence of external inputs. Varietal choice is the major crop specific management decision organic farmers can make on a short-term basis to manage crop performance. Here, we present the results of two years of field-scale variety testing of winter wheat in England, which is the arable crop with the largest acreage, yet with a very small and shrinking organic acreage. In the framework of the H2020 LIVESEED project, we started a collective experiment in which varieties were tested by organic farmers at a commercial field scale. This programme is currently in its third year and expanding, it involves 14 farmers and has tested 15 varieties.In the first two years, this work has paved the way to better understand winter wheat production and thereby build decision support frameworks and feedback to breeders on useful traits. It has also been a powerful tool for co-learning between researchers, farmers and supply chain stakeholders. Collective experiments can empower the organic sector to independently produce the evidence needed for on-farm decision making.