project - EIP-AGRI Operational Group
Regulated organic seed supply chains for wheat evolutionary populations: an important asset for organic agriculture - Breed4Bio
Contexte
Recently the European Union (EU) has set a temporary experiment that allows the marketing of seeds from populations of wheat, barley, oats and corn (Implementing Decisions 2014/150 and 2018/1519). These introduce an absolute novelty in the seed sector, opening up to the marketing of heterogeneous material that does not comply with the requirements of distinctiveness, uniformity and stability (DUS) (Directive 66/402 / EEC). Meanwhile, the EU Council has adopted the new organic regulation with effects starting from 2022 (EU Reg. 2018/848), which indicates, among the seeds suitable for organic farming, those deriving from heterogeneous material. The populations, therefore, could constitute the seed material for the future of organic farming. Currently, many farmers use non-organic seeds using derogations, mainly due to the limited availability of seeds produced organically. Being able to draw on seed material selected and produced specifically for low-input productions, such as organic ones, which respect traceability and health conditions, is of interest for the operators the organic sector. The seed chain invests in verifying the conditions of reproducibility and marketing of heterogeneous material so that it is: i) healthy and not infected; and ii) tracked and manageable from a production point of view.
Objectives
The objective is to build a sustainable organic seed supply chain model for heterogeneous material (wheat populations) able to guarantee traceability and quality of the seed. The specific objectives are to: i) develop services to support the supply chain (agronomic support, management and traceability, a dedicated mobile application); ii) guarantee the quality (specific phytosanitary purity) of the seed by identifying the operations to be carried out in the critical phases without impoverishing the intrinsic biodiversity of the populations; iii) evaluate the socio-economic sustainability of the supply chain; ii) disseminating knowledge and sensitivity on agro-ecological approaches.
Activities
Activities are divided into Work Packages:
Project management;
Supply chain relations - to build processes and services for the seed supply chain of wheat populations by collecting, analyzing and organizing the needs of all actors;
Agronomic multiplication tests in the farms - to verify the agronomic performance of some wheat populations in different environments and identify the necessary operations in the field;
Laboratory analysis for population traceability - for seed quality verification;
Seed processing - to develop effective processing techniques for heterogeneous material, i.e. the populations;
Economic analysis of the supply chain;
Dissemination;
Training to farmers
Project details
- Main funding source
- Rural development 2014-2020 for Operational Groups
- Rural Development Programme
- 2014IT06RDRP003 Italy - Rural Development Programme (Regional) - Emilia-Romagna
Emplacement
- Main geographical location
- Bologna
- Other geographical location
- Reggio nell'Emilia, Rimini
EUR 298923.73
Total budget
Total contributions from EAFRD, national co-financing, additional national financing and other financing.
Ressources
Liens
5 Practice Abstracts
WP5 verified the conditions that allow for economic sustainability of the wheat population supply chain, identifying the areas of special attention with a view to its efficiency that would keep the price of seeds, cultivation/processing and thus the finished product within acceptable limits for intermediate and end users, while still offering good profitability along the supply chain.
Through interactions with industry stakeholders, a spreadsheet in Excel® was constructed to simulate the breakdown of value (costs and margins along supply chains), which are characterized by different products (seed supply chain and food supply chain) and different degrees of processing of the marketed product (grain, flour, bread). The spreadsheet in Excel® has been made available at www.gobreedforbio.it/news-e-documenti/Open link in new window along with the user manual.
It is evident how prices and margins at all stages can vary significantly in different situations, depending not only on the size and relative bargaining power of the operators involved, but also on specific output characteristics, cyclical inflationary dynamics etc.
Seed processing in the case of populations must be carefully calibrated; in fact, the elimination of foreign seeds or impurities must not also be followed by the elimination of lines belonging to the population. To verify this, the two samples taken for each population and farm before and after processing were seeded in affinity plots on the CREA-DC experimental farm in two years (2022 and 2023). Observations made for all trial populations showed no macroscopic differences in the phenotypic composition of plots sown with seed in the wild and with selected seed.
Significant indicators for seed quality of cereal populations were found to be:
- the absence of charcoal;
- the absence of plants/seeds of foreign species (cultivated/spontaneous) that are difficult to eliminate in mechanical selection.
- the locality of multiplication. Excessive soil fertility results in excessive height and thus an increased likelihood of crop lodging and seed loss/discard. Also in WP3, samples positive for Ustilago sp. were subjected to the following heat treatments at Coop Agr. Cesenate: 50°C, 60°C, 70°C dry for 24 hours in a ventilated stove and 70°C for 24 hours after immersion in H2O for 30 minutes. Germination was confirmed for the dry-treated samples, while the wet treatment reduced it significantly. For the 70°C dry treatment, no spikes with the presence of Ustilago sp were found.
For the detection of its presence, no specific protocols for Ustilago tritici are available in the literature, so the ISTA 7-13a protocol for Ustilago nuda was adapted by applying Trypan blue dye.
In WP3, the quality of seed produced following processing at a seed company was verified through laboratory analysis. For each farm and wheat population, samples taken at harvest and samples taken after seed processing at the seed company in the 2021 and 2022 crop years were analyzed. The parameters analyzed were: specific purity, determination of foreign seed number and germinability. The results confirmed the effectiveness of seed processing in terms of specific purity, with a value of 100% for all populations on each farm in 2021 and values above the legal limits for 2022. After seed processing, the number of foreign seeds decreases sharply, even on farms with higher foreign species pollution. The legal limit for this parameter for a second generation seed is 10 seeds of other species and 7 seeds if there are other cereal species. Foreign species that tend to persist even after seed processing are: Hordeum vulgare; Triticum durum; Secale cereale and Vicia spp. in the year 2021 and Abelmoschus esculentus; Convolvulus arvensis; Galium spp.; Hordeum vulgare; Triticum durum in the year 2022. All populations observed on each farm and in both years have a germinability percentage within the legal limits for their category already at harvest (legal minimum for second-generation seed: 85%), this figure then improves after seed processing, following removal of broken or damaged seed.
The agronomic performance of evolutionary populations of bread wheat (T. aestivum L. FURAT FLORIDDIA, MIX TENERO TOSCANA 1, MIX TENERO TOSCANA PA1 and BIO2) in the open field in different areas in the Emilia-Romagna Apennines over two years (2021 and 2022) was tested, identifying the field operations necessary to ensure quality seed production. The overall average yield of wheat populations on the three farmswas 2.5 t/ha. The population Furat Floriddia was the most productive as an average of the two years and the three farms with 2.56 t/ha, followed by BIO2 (2.37 t/ha), Mix Toscana 1 (2.25 t/ha) and Mix Toscana PA1 (2.20 t/ha). The average plant height in 2021 (123.8 cm) was significantly higher than the average height in 2022 (116.9 cm). All wheat in 2022 had lower vegetative development due to the prolonged absence of rainfall in spring. The Furat Floriddia population, at 47.54 g, had a higher average 1000-kernel weight than the other populations. The overall average protein content was 12.6%. In 2021, the presence of Ustilago sp. was recorded in all but one project population. In contrast, the presence of Tilletia, rust, Fusarium and powdery mildew was not detected. In 2022, however, Ustilago was almost absent in the field, probably as a result of a drier weather pattern than in 2021.
WP 1, which included activities aimed at developing the supply chain of evolutionary wheat populations, led to the drafting and sharing of documents useful for seed production, the creation and administration of a farmer questionnaire, the implementation of a focus group, two workshops, the development of new functions for the SeedLinked App, and the production of flour and breads of evolutionary populations. The analysis report of the 70 responses to the questionnaire is available at www.gobreedforbio.it/news-e-documenti/Open link in new window. The workshops discussed the new perspectives opened up by the EU Regulation 2018/848 on seeds, with particular reference to Organic Heterogeneous Material, in particular, the new features contained in the delegated acts published in May 2021. Thanks to the focus group, the salient elements of supply chain relations with regard to bread and pasta production chains were analyzed. The focus group revealed how supply chain relationships enable the value chain to be strengthened and rebalanced, supporting the joint pursuit of quality that sustains processing and builds consumer loyalty, fully justifying the necessary price premiums. The SeedLinked mobile application for setting up decentralized on-farm varietal trials, field data collection by both farmers and technicians, and geolocation of the farm network, has been developed for use in Italy. The App's user manual for technicians and farmers is available at www.rsr.bio/seedlinkedOpen link in new window and www.gobreedforbio.itOpen link in new window.
Contacts
Project coordinator
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Open Fields srl
Project coordinator
Project partners
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Arcoiris srl
Project partner
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Azienda Agraria Sperimentale Stuard
Project partner
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Azienda Agricola Cà di Bartoletto
Project partner
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Azienda Agricola Marzocchi Arianna
Project partner
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Azienda Agricola Terrasanta
Project partner
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CREA Difesa e Certificazione
Project partner
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Centoform srl
Project partner
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Cooperativa Agricola Cesenate
Project partner
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Molino Pransani
Project partner
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Rete Semi Rurali
Project partner