Incidence of limiting factors on organic winter wheat performance

Summary

French organic farmers are asked to increase Grain Protein Content (GPC) of organic winter wheat to guarantee the breadmaking quality required from millers. Facing with the recent depletion of organic products, farmers also need to stabilize and increase the yield performance. The aim of our study is to give the explanations of the yield and GPC variability generally observed in organic production. A diagnostic method will be implemented on a network of ca. 10 fields per year during two crop years added with previous field network (77 fields) and experi-ments (4 experiments on cultivars). We will under-stand yield and GPC performance from environmental and agronomic conditions and relate the observed limiting factors with crop management, climatic con-ditions and characteristics of the cropping systems.