The document discusses the significance of plant breeding in organic agriculture, highlighting its impact on food availability and agricultural sustainability. It explores the definitions, principles, and requirements of organic plant breeding, as well as current trends and challenges faced due to centralization in the seed market. Additionally, it presents case studies relevant to developing new varieties suited for organic farming, emphasizing the collaborative role of farmers and scientists in participatory breeding programs.

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SREE VATHSA SAGAR U S
PG20AGR12071
Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding
UNIVERSITY OF AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES
RAICHUR
Ist MASTER’S SEMINAR

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4. “Plant Breeding impacts people and societies because it determines
the course of our agricultural future. without appropriate varieties
that are relevant for their particular farming systems, farmers cannot
be successful and consumers suffer from either price increases or
lack of food availability, or both”.
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5. BREEDING
TECHNIQUES
FOR
ORGANIC
AGRICULTURE
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6. SEQUENCE OF SEMINAR :
 Definition of Organic agriculture
 Global and Indian share of organic farming
 Definition of organic Plant Breeding
 Requirements for organic Plant Breeding
 Basic principles endorsed by IFOAM
 At present Plant Breeding scenario
 Objectives for organic Plant Breeding
 Different OPB techniques
 Case studies
 Conclusion
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7. ORGANIC AGRICULTURE (IFOAM)
“Organic Agriculture is a production system that sustains the health
of soils, ecosystems and people. It relies on ecological processes,
biodiversity and cycles adapted to local conditions, rather than the
use of inputs with adverse effects.”
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In financial year 2020, over two percent of the net area in India was under organic farming, a major
increase
from last year (4.3 million Ha). In general, the area under organic farming has increased continuously,
signifying more demand for organic food.

11. ORGANIC PRODUCERS
 organic producers worldwide : 3.1 million
India with the highest number of producers (13,66,000),
Uganda (2,10,000),
Ethiopia (2,04,000).
A total of 72.3 million hectares were organic at the end of 2019, representing a growth of 1.6 percent or 1.1
million hectares compared to 2018.
 Australia has the largest organic agricultural area (35.7 million hectares),
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IFOAM.,2020

12. DEFINITION OF ORGANIC PLANT BREEDING
ACCORDING TO IFOAM NORMS 2012
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General Principles :
Organic plant breeding is
sustainable, enhances
genetic diversity.
Organic breeding is always
creative, cooperative and
open for science, intuition,
and new findings.
Organic plant breeding is a
holistic approach.
Organic plant breeding is
based on viable plants.
Organic varieties are
obtained by an organic
plant breeding program.

13. REQUIREMENTS:
Plant breeders shall select their
varieties under organic conditions
that comply with the requirements of
this standard. All multiplication
practices except meristem culture all
shall be under certified organic
management
Organic plant breeders should not use
genetic engineering……..!
Organic plant breeders shall disclose
the applied breeding techniques.
Organic farming looks at the
breeding of new varieties in a
holistic way.
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14. The genome is respected
as an impartible entity .
The cell is respected as an
impartible entity .
Technical interventions not
allowed
The natural reproductive
ability of a plant variety
respected. NO terminator
technologies
Organic plant breeders
may obtain plant variety
protection, but organic
varieties shall not be
patented.
Annuals at least for one
generation, biannual
plants and perennials have
to be grown for at least
two generations under
organic conditions same
for land conversion.
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IFOAM.,
2017

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16. AT PRESENT PLANT BREEDING SCENARIO :
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FiBL., 2015
 Over the past several decades, plant breeding has become increasingly formalized and centralized.
 Most breeders working for large seed companies, as well as most public breeders, focus their attention
primarily on the largest markets for seed
 The three largest companies Monsanto, DuPont and Syngenta control 53 % of the global proprietary seed
market.
 This focus on the needs of large-scale, conventional agriculture leaves organic farmers without varieties that
are adapted to then needs of their systems.

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Sunny et al ., 2020

19. BREEDING OBJECTIVES FOR DEVELOPING VARIETIES SUITED TO
ORGANIC CONDITIONS :
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Optimal adaptation to local climate and nutrient dynamics.
Nutrient efficiency
Tolerance to mechanical weed control
Durable resistance and tolerance against pests and diseases
Improving legume symbiotic effectiveness
Rhizosphere competence for disease suppression
Yield stability
Storability
Human nutritional, sensorical quality and some secondary metabolites may be valuable in resistance to human diseases.
Organic plant breeding aims should be defined on a crop by crop bases involving farmers, breeders, traders, and consumers

20. BREEDING TECHNIQUES :
In breeding , various techniques can be applied to different anatomical levels of a plant :
 Whole plant level, i.e. the single plant, its progeny or a population
 Tissue level, i.e. the plant parts, organs or cell cultures
 Cell level, i.e. an isolated single cell, protoplasts, pollen or egg cell
 DNA level, i.e. the nuclear DNA or extra-chromosomal DNA
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21. DIFFERENT BREEDING TECHNIQUES FOR OPB :
Inter-specific hybrids:
Critical issues from the perspective of organic farming:
Crossing barriers between species are not clearly defined boundaries, but become stronger with
increasing differentiation of the species, i.e. the chance of successful fertilization and seed
formation decreases correspondingly.
Technical interventions, such as in vitro fertilization of the egg cell and pollen or in vitro
cultivation of the embryo shortly after fertilization not
allowed except……
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22. EMBRYO RESCUE IN PLANTS :
In order to improve frequency of progeny of wide crosses, the embryo is transferred to artificial media in rare
cases. The embryo is derived from natural fusion of egg and pollen cell.
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23. BRIDGE CROSSING :
 Critical issues from the perspective of organic farming:
None
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24. CGMS :
Critical issues from the perspective of organic
farming:
 seed saving is not possible. These individuals may only be used
as mother plants for further breeding. Male sterility is
passed on to the progeny.
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25. SHUTTLE BREEDING :
 Critical issues from the perspective of organic farming: None
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26. PROTEOMICS / METABOLOMICS :
 Critical issues from the perspective of organic farming:
none unless chemical or genetically engineered plants are not
Involved in cultivar development
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27. CLONAL VARIETIES :
 Critical issues from the perspective of organic farming:
 Application of synthetic rooting hormones and pesticides
are prohibited
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28. APOMIXIS :
 Critical issues from the perspective of organic farming:
None unless it is not induced through chemicals
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29. SYNTHETIC VARIETIES :
 Critical issues from the perspective of organic farming:
None and in open pollination care should be taken to
Prevent out crossing with conventional grown varieties and GMO
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30. POLYPLOIDISATION :
 Yes, if natural colchicine and if applied on intact seed or plants
 Tetraploid plants occur in nature but can also be induced by anti-mitotic drugs, e. g. colchicine or oryzalin.
Tetraploid plant often show higher vigor. The antimitotic drug can be obtained from plants. Application can
take place on the whole seed or on seedlings. No in vitro step is necessary.
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31. MARKER-ASSISTED SELECTION:
 Critical issues from the perspective of organic farming:
 Plants are evaluated merely based on their DNA Sequence,
So none
1. Early generation marker-assisted selection
2. Marker-assisted Backcrossing
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32. MARKER ASSISTED GENE PYRAMIDING (MAGP) :
 Pyramiding is a breeding strategy for taking genes from different parents and stacking them in one progeny
 MAGP is one of the effective method for accumulating multiple resistance genes, it is one of the most
important applications of molecular markers to organic plant breeding.
 It is used for traits which are quantitative in nature oa
 Steps Cumulating of all target genes in a single genotype
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Homozygous state
Pedigree

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35. PARTICIPATORY ORGANIC PLANT BREEDING :
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Monica., 2017

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37. SPEED BREEDING :
 The principle behind speed breeding is to use optimum light intensity, temperature, and daytime length
control (Croser et al.)
 Speed breeding had been reported to shorten generation time by extending photoperiods ,while certain crop
species, such as radish (Raphanus sativus), pepper (Capsicum annum), and leafy vegetables such as Amaranth
(Amaranthus spp.) and sunflower (Helianthus annuus) responded positively to increased day length
 It is not allowed by using phytohormones
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Extended photoperiods induced earlier flowering and created 4 generations annually

39. FAST TRACK BREEDING BY SINGLE SEED DESCENT
 In order to speed up the breeding process, plants are
stressed by reduced space, or water to cause fast onset
seeds allowing several generations per year, e.g. wheat, ground
nut.
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Sejal ., et al 2019

40. DOUBLE HAPLOIDS OBTAINED BY POLLINATION WITH INDUCTOR
LINE AND SPONTANEOUS DUPLICATION (IN VIVO) SHGD :
Egg cells can be induced by cross pollination with inductor line into develop haploid embryos without fusion of
the egg cell and pollen and, thus, no recombination of genes. The haploid embryo can spontaneously double
their chromosomes to become homozygous double haploid plants . This was a standard practice in maize
breeding.
 All steps are in vivo;
 no in vitro culture,
 no application of chemicals.
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IFOAM., 2017

41. ECO-TILLING = TARGETING INDUCED LOCAL LESIONS IN GENOMES
AND DECO-TILLING :
 Analysis of natural available genetic diversity by reverse genetics
 A system to detect SNPs that we call DEco-TILLING. The DEco-TILLING method facilitates the development
of useful genotyping assays rapidly and inexpensively and can reduce bias.
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42. TRANSPOSONS :
 Transposons are jumping genes that occur in nature and are responsible for mutations. Transposon activity
can be modified in order to increase mutation rate. This can be done by chemicals or by physical stress like
drought or heat.
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Manu et al.,2018

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45. CASE STUDIES
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47. OBJECTIVES :
 To develop a tomato MAGIC population;
 To perform an organic PPB program, in order to obtain new varieties adapted to organic condition.
 To evaluate the selected seedling by the Marker Assisted Selection (MAS), for the pyramiding of interesting
genes that are present in the eight founders;
 To obtain the RILs through SSD that will be genotyped to find QTLs and develop new molecular markers for
important agronomic traits.
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48. MATERIALS AND METHODS :
 The Solanum lycopersicum lines were selected for the resistance to fungi, bacteria and viruses The Solanum
cheesmaniae is a wild relative accession and it was selected for traits as biotic and abiotic stress tolerance,
yield and resiliency.
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50. PARTICIPATORY PLANT BREEDING APPROACH :
 The 400 G4 tomato plants obtained in summer 2017 was used in participatory breeding programs (PBB).
 This activity was carried out during the spring–summer 2018 growing season on three Italian organic farms:
North ,Central and South Italy.
 The farmers, in collaboration with the scientists, selected the most desirable plants of the core collection in
their own fields.
 The field experiments carried out in three farms were conducted by applying the local technique for tomato
organic production.
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51. FARMERS EVALUATION :
 single plant evaluation was visually performed by farmers, researchers and technicians, who individually
indicated a score ranging from 1 (= bad value) to 4 (= very good value).
 On the basis of this score, the fruits were collected from the selected plants and were evaluated for the
quality parameters.
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52. Finally, the fruits of these plants were collected, and the selection by the researchers testing other measuring
parameters followed in the laboratory. The total number of parameters evaluated during the selection were :
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53.  Even if the first selection years are not enough to draw a general conclusion on the production of adapted
tomato materials, the findings of this research pointed out that the Participatory Plant Breeding program,
assisted by the molecular analysis, is not only economically and agronomically feasible, but it also
beneficial environmental effects.
 this study on organic tomato agronomic sustainability can be considered a key tool to produce plants adapted
to low input crop managements especially in organic production.
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55. CONCLUSIONS
 The MAGIC population developed together with the whole genome sequences of the founder lines and the
collection obtained from the PPB are extremely important to develop genotypes adapted to organic
 The production of these materials could represent a stable, long-lasting collection and an important
genetic resource both for scientists and farmers communities.
 MAGIC lines were identified new molecular markers associated to important agronomic traits. This research
will further allow us to follow the allelic frequencies evolution in the different environmental conditions.
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57. OBJECTIVES :
 The reintroduction of improved traditional varieties suitable for organic agriculture
 The objectives of this work were to evaluate under organic and conventional agriculture several maize
varieties improved for grain yield or quality along with other open-pollinated populations of maize
the past by farmers under traditional agriculture.
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58. MATERIALS AND METHODS :
 They evaluated for agronomic performance and grain quality under organic and conventional agriculture
ten open-pollinated populations, potentially valuable for maize bread or bakery use
 Five of these open-pollinated populations (Donostia, Meiro, Rebordanes, Sarreaus, and Tuy)
have been improved for grain yield or flour yield during one or three cycles.
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60. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN :
 The resulting 20 open-pollinated maize populations and improved cycles from northern Spain and two
commercial checks were evaluated in two farmers fields under organic and conventional agriculture.
 Five organic environments and five conventional environments were used between 2010, 2011 and 2012
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Grown under organic conditions abiding to IFOAM norms

61.  The 22 genotypes were evaluated in trials that followed an experimental design of randomized complete
blocks with three replications.
 In each plot they measured :
 early vigor
 plant appearance
 days to silking,
 ears per plant,
 grain yield
 flour yield
 grain moisture
 100 grain weight,
 milling test
 grain density
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62. EVALUATION :
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 When they checked the effects of selection for yield, flour yield, and milling test, They found out that most
regression coefficients were not significant, with most of the significant coefficients being negative.
 Only Meiro significantly increased yield under organic conditions while it decreased for Sarreaus. Except for
Donostia with a significant decrease of yield in both organic and conventional conditions.

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65. CONCLUSION :
 GRAIN YIELD was highest for both commercial checks, followed by Meiro(P)C2 and Martikoenea.
 EARLIEST VARIETIES, BASED ON FLOWERING AND GRAIN MOISTURE, were Sarreaus and its improved
cycles, Donostia and its improved cycle, and Martikoenea
 Maize hybrids yielded 16 % less under organic than under conventional conditions. As a general trend,
open-pollinated varieties performed better in the organic environments for vegetative traits and in the
conventional environments for yield components.
 As conclusion, breeding has been efficient for “MEIRO” in organic conditions
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