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Organic farmers need productive, reliable corn hybrids adapted to their farming systems with better grain quality. Their options and choice are decreasing due to increasing industry consolidation and fewer elite lines available to organic seed companies, while public corn breeding is facing a crisis of survival. A long-term goal of this project is to reinvigorate public corn breeding by forming networks with farmers and seed companies so that an uninterrupted stream of improved high-quality hybrids are available for organic agriculture. This project will help us create a system that provides organic farmers with a wider choice of improved corn hybrids. We have a clear protocol in place for developing and disseminating superior varieties for organic producers. This project will help us develop a funding mechanism to stabilize and support the public sector's breeding programs. This mechanism will serve as a model for other groups focused on improved organic seed. The objectives are to assemble a catalog of corn breeding germplasm for organic production in the major U.S. corn-producing areas, to build a sustainable corn breeding effort that can reliably provide varieties to an emerging seed industry dedicated to organic markets, to build a cooperative network including farmers, small seed companies, winter nursery providers, organic grain users, and others that ensures that organic farmers have access to elite corn varieties, to develop cultivars that are targeted for organic needs and adapted for seed production and grain production under organic conditions through on-farm testing, stress nurseries, and grain quality testing, and to disseminate our results through farmer meetings, seminars, booklets, scholarly publications, by working with seed, retail, and end-user companies, and by putting information on the internet. The availability of public cultivars will support the profitability and expansion of organic farming and seed, and meet specific nutritional needs of organic livestock. Organic farmers and their customers deserve the same economic benefits from improved cultivars adapted to their farming systems that have been realized in conventional agricultural systems. This work will support farmers interested in sustainable production strategies, increasing production carried out with environmentally-friendly practices. There will be several expected outputs associated with this work. We will have a published assessment of the germplasm base of improved public breeding populations. We will conduct selection, plot trials, and strip trials that will lead to improved varieties demonstrated to farmers and seed companies at field days. Commercialization and supply channels involving farmer seed production, farmer evaluations, and seed company use of our varieties will be ongoing. In addition, an organic winter nursery site will become functional. These outputs will also benefit others in the public and private sector.
Non-Technical Summary: Corn is a remarkably productive crop with incredible diversity, making it amenable to industrial manipulation for foods, fuel, and feed. Due to modern focus on grain yield under conventional conditions it has not been developed for low-input and organic agricultural systems. Private corn breeding is dominated by companies who sell transgenic hybrids almost exclusively. The biotechnology and genomics revolution of the past decades has left public corn breeding in a precarious position. Seed industry consolidation and its focus on large seed markets have left market opportunity in organic and non-GMO corn seed. This market opportunity may be short-lived if a steady supply of improved varieties from public breeders does not stay available to these seed companies. Farmers increase their business stability by using their corn to feed livestock, or selling it as food or feed grain. Crop rotations, soil quality, soil and pest management practices, and grain quality needs are different for organic farms as compared to conventional farms. Breeding varieties under organic conditions for organic needs and refining the offerings by testing in organic systems will give organic farmers hybrids that are optimized for their farming system. Essentially all organic corn produced in the USA is used for the production of animal feed or human food. Improving its nutritional quality will result in health benefits to consumers, eliminate expensive supplements in feed, and improve the quality and decrease the cost of organic animal products. This is a clear change in direction from industrial corn breeding where there is a disincentive to improve nutritional quality because industrial corn is used for fuel in cars and starch in animal rations and human food. Public breeders are experts in developing improved varieties but they need to cooperate with seed companies to get them to farmers. A network of public and private breeders, NGO's, farmers, small seed companies and organic poultry companies has come together for breeding, testing, doing outreach, and facilitating variety release. This project will provide for the breeding, testing, and outreach programs of public organic breeding programs in Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio, and New York, enabling them to develop the appropriate varieties. It will provide an organic winter nursery to double the speed at which new varieties become available. They will also test, exchange and catalogue the best breeding populations, and make them publicly available. Special emphasis will be on breeding for disease and pest control and on increasing nutritional value of grain. We will increase the content of protein and the essential amino acids lysine and methionine because they limit the growth, health, and productivity of poultry, hogs, cattle and people. Our project facilitates organic breeding, determines desirable traits for commodities, conducts advanced on-farm experimentation, and develops improved seed varieties for organic agriculture. Seed company use of public germplasm will return money to the public programs through licensing. Farmer and breeder interaction will help breeders to select better lines and hybrids. <P> Approach: We are implementing a new approach to corn breeding, variety evaluation, and delivery for organic farmers in the Corn Belt with collaborators from public universities, USDA-ARS, non-profit NGOs, or who are independent breeders, in conjunction with small seed companies and farmers. We will work with companies to evaluate elite and experimental hybrids under organic systems and with with farmers to evaluate those with greatest on-farm potential. Through these and other interactions (e.g., field days, meetings) we will offer seed companies parental seed that will provide farmers with choice in purchasing a wide variety of productive, reliable hybrids. We have a clear protocol in place for developing and disseminating superior varieties for organic producers. Our project will strengthen the various components of this team effort, enabling us to develop, test, multiply, and release high quality productive corn cultivars for organic farmers as soon as possible. It will involve accelerated breeding, testing, and multiplication at organic test sites in Iowa, Wisconsin, Ohio, and New York, a special stress testing site in Illinois, and an organic winter site for multiplication and breeding in Puerto Rico. We will continue and expand our outreach program which includes interacting with farmers and industry, field days, information on relevant websites, and literature. We will conduct joint yield trials using locations in each state, using the improved breeding populations that each breeder has developed. By the end of this testing, we will have a database of breeding populations, their adaptation to a wide variety of organic environments, their grain quality, and a measure of their native disease and insect resistance. Because the yield tests will be conducted on farms and in some locations used for field days, farmers and seed companies will be able to observe the populations and their performance. Experimental hybrids from our breeding programs will be tested in small replicated plot trials at cooperating organic farms. These trials will be managed by the breeder. In addition, selected varieties from the plot trials of the four breeding programs will be tested in large strip-trial plots on farms. The most promising hybrids from plot and strip trials will be entered into the USTN trials. The data collected from screening for grain quality, stress, disease, and insect resistance will be used to characterize the entries. Data will be shared at winter meetings and through other venues including scientific meetings and published. We have considerable experience with the breeding and analytical techniques and do not expect any major problems in interpreting the results to breed new cultivars. Relevant commercial organic check hybrids will assist in the determination of the percentage of entries that are not significantly different from the pertinent benchmarks. This will help seed and end-user companies to look to the USTN and our other trials for new potential products.