Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
Organic farmers need to have adapted crop cultivars to be optimally productive and profitable. Breeding crops under organic management will result in cultivars well-suited to production needs of those systems, such as improved disease resistance or novel traits that are particularly relevant for organic production. The objectives of this program are to breed new varieties of tomato, wheat, zinnia, common bean, celtuce, and spinach for organic producers in California and neighboring states. This project builds on our existing OREI-funded breeding pipelines that are led by students who gain experiential training in field-based plant breeding directly in organic systems. In this project, we add new crops and expand our program to UC Santa Cruz, who will be focusing on breeding for dry farming. With both self- and cross-fertilized crops and vegetable, agronomic, and ornamental species, students will gain familiarity with a broad complement of breeding systems and variety types, including pure line, open-pollinated, and hybrid cultivars and develop new cultivars to meet the needs of diverse organic growers. We will develop instructional information to help new students and farmers understand and undertake breeding, selection, and evaluation trials. The Organic Seed Alliance will organize regular interactions and meetings between student researchers, faculty, organic seed companies, and organic growers. We will develop and conduct on-farm trials, host extension events at trial sites, and ensure that new, publicly released cultivars derived from our program will be useful and available to organic growers and organic seed companies.
Animal Health Component
50%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
50%
Developmental
50%
Goals / Objectives
The long term goals of the Student Collaborative Organic Plant-breeding and Education (SCOPE) Project are to provide hands-on plant breeding opportunities to university students and to collaborate with farmers and seed companies to release cultivars useful to organic growers and seed producers.The specific objectives of this project will involve, assist, and empower students and growers in all aspects of the project to:1. Develop and release cultivars of vegetables, grains, and flowers suitable for organic farming systems.2. Understand organic plant breeding programs through experiential education and engagement with instructional modules.3. Facilitate long term relationships among farmers, seed producers, and community members through on-farm trials, participatory breeding programs, and in-person and virtual events.
Project Methods
We will conduct breeding programs of six crops: wheat, tomato, zinnia, common bean, spinach, and celtuce in this project. The methods used will be those typically used in conventional plant breeding programs for each crop, with modifications as needed to account for the specific biology of the crop. Populations segregating for traits of interest will be developed by controlled hybridization. Data will be collected from replicated, multi-location trials among breeding lines and for advanced experimental germplasm. Seed production will be done on research stations on in conjunction with private organic seed companies. Interested farmers will be involved in trialing experimentals and in some case, direclty particpate in making breeding decisions and selecting desirable genotypes. Selected experimental germplasm will be officially released and made available to seed companies and/or to organic farmers directly.A key component of this project is training young breeders by doing the activities of a plant breeding program directly. Both graduate and undergraduate students will be involved in all phases of the breeding programs, from making decisions on selection targets to making crosses between desirable genotypes, collecting data to conducting statistical analyses, summarizing project performance and making presentations at field days and on social media. We will develop internships at each participating university for students to formally investigate particular plant breeding activities.Undergraduate and graduate students in education-related majors at UCD and UCSC will be recruited to develop educational modules on organic farming and plant breeding. Modules will include demonstration videos, lectures, and recorded field walks. Module content, such as crossing, experimental design, seed production, and selection demonstrations, will be developed, leveraging existing information from project participants where possible. This information will be formatted into modules (Sharable Content Object Reference Models or SCORMS) that can be used in either in- person or on-line instruction, integrated into course management software (Canvas or similar Learning Management Systems), and easily exported to other institutions.On-farm field trials will be conducted for the breeding programs of all crops. Farmers interested in hosting trials will typically evaluate 2-4 experimental cultivars along with 2-4 standard check cultivars, with details determined based on the crop, the scale the farm can handle, and the seed availability. Trials will typically be planted in replicated designs to enable statistical analysis of data. We expect that farmers may take very limited data on desirability, interest in growing the cultivar again, etc. More in depth data collection on various traits will be done by SCOPE personnel using the Field Book app.