Characteristics of spring barley varieties and crop diversity for organic farming and variety testing

Summary

Results from Danish spring barley variety trials including about 50-120 varieties and variety mixtures on three locations over three years under organic as well as conventional farming systems demonstrate the importance of genotype-environment interactions. This has implications for potential future organic VCU-testing; here results are shown for grain yield. Further, grain yield results from of six variety mixtures and their 14 component varieties indicate that variety mixtures may be less influenced by genotype-environment interactions compared to pure line varieties.