Market opportunities and technical challenges for organic seed producers: focus on TECHNICAL CHALLENGES

Summary in the original language of the document

In alignment with the farm to fork strategy and Green Deal, in 2030 one quarter of the total farmland shall be under organic farming. Although the organic seed availability varies from one country to another, farmers can get derogations for producing seeds even if the practices are not to 100% organic. As seed quality is sometimes lacking, such derogations can be applied case per case. In 2036 seeds and vegetative propagation material used for organic farming have to be produced under organic conditions. Such decisions lead to high importance for tackling those challenges. Organic seed production faces numerous challenges as regulatory, technical, economic and social bottlenecks. In 3.4 we focus on technical challenges of organic seed production.
High quality seed production (figure 1) starts with an appropriate field, and crop type depends on climatic conditions to improve better pest and disease control. Agronomic management practices and harvest technics and timing will influence seed quality. Seeds go through different process as seed cleaning/seed sorting, seed testing, seed storage and seed coating until they can be sowed again. Within those different steps technical issues occur and need to be optimised to reach 2036 goals. We already know from previous and on-going projects which pests and diseases are problematic and main objective of task 3.4 is to tackle challenges in scaling up organic seed production for selected crops, from the perspective of seed companies. We will try to identify major challenges of upscaling organic seed and vegetative production for main crops in different EU regions and propose potential solutions for a roadmap of 100% organic seed considering technical, scaling, logistic, economic and political aspects.