Participatory Plant Breeding And Trialing To Increase Farmer Choice In Vegetable Varieties Through The Novic Project

"The demand for organic food in the United States continues to increase at two to three times the rate of demand for non-organic food and a substantial portion of this is organic fruits and vegetables. A comprehensive breeding and seeds system targeted to organic production systems is required to provide the cultivars needed to support increasing demand for fruits and vegetables. Farmers still lack access to a wide array of certified-organic seed and vegetable varieties adapted to organic production. Cultivars that are best adapted to organic production will be those bred under organic conditions. The Northern Organic Vegetable Improvement Collaborative (NOVIC) was implemented to increase the diversity and choice of vegetable cultivars available to organic farmers. It has been funded in three four-year cycles with the project currently in its second year of the third cycle. It is a collaboration of six institutions and over 30 organic farms in six states. The overall goal of NOVIC is to increase the proportion of U.S. agriculture that is managed organically. NOVIC uses participatory plant breeding and participatory variety trialing to understand farmers’ needs and conduct breeding efforts. The project has three major initiatives: 1) to conduct vegetable variety trials to identify those adapted to organic systems; 2) to breed vegetable crops where needs are identified; and 3) to provide farmers with the knowledge to produce their own seed and to breed their own varieties. NOVIC has been instrumental in 10 releases of four crops, with another 12 varieties of seven crops in the pipeline. In addition, there are numerous private sector varieties that have undergone evaluation in NOVIC trials. Essentially all of farmers who have participated in NOVIC have indicated that they have changed varieties based on regional trial results. Outreach activities have occurred in about a dozen states through plant breeding workshops and videos and publications are available online.