Page 238 - Breeding and regulatory opportunities, Renaud

Chapter 6

knowledge of the certiication process or background in deining organic crop

ideotypes, they may not be inclined to participate and become full players in

the organic seed market.

The conventional seed company with an organic division indicated as Model 2

in Figure 6.1, services the organic market with both conventional post-

harvest untreated and organic seed of a select subset of specialized crops. The

strength of a conventional seed company with an organic division is that it has

committed to the value of the organic market through its investments. As these

companies have a breadth of genetic resources, modern breeding techniques,

extensive trial grounds, seed reproduction capacity and strong marketing and

sales departments to promote the commercialization of new cultivars, they

are in turn able to provide quality cultivars to the marketplace with thorough

technical support information. By screening of their breeding and commercial

material on grown on organically managed land, they have the capacity to see

trait diferentiation in their material and deine organic crop ideotypes for their

crops. Their contribution to breeding for the organic market is indicated with a

dotted line in Figure 6.1 because they predominantly screen their conventional

material on organic land. At this time, they have a small amount of breeding

initiatives directed at the organic market. In the US example, some of the

breeder companies do not do direct sales of organic seed to the end user. Their

varieties are distributed and marketed through seed dealers. The eforts that

the seed companies in Model 2 invest in breeding and producing organic seed

are often unknown to the organic sector because the dealer brands the seed.

The biggest contribution that these companies make to the organic seed sector

is the availability of good performing cultivars with high yield potential and

disease resistance in organic form. As a result of their investment in cultivar

development (predominantly hybrid), they tend to be higher priced and service

the mid-to-large scale grower. The advantage of this model to the end user is

the availability of a wider cultivar choice for both organic and conventional

production. The limitation of this model is that because the organic sector is a

smaller portion of their overall business, it is therefore of lesser market priority.

If a comprehensive regulatory policy was to go into efect, these companies

would be prepared to expand their organic varietal assortment, invest in more

production capacity and increase the inclusion of high priority traits (see 6.3.3)

in their overall breeding programs.

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