Sweet Corn Lessons on Breeding for Organic Agriculture

As part of the NOVIC project, Organic Seed Alliance and their partners have been researching how to efficiently breed for organic systems, using sweet corn as a model crop to optimize breeding trial design and coordination across locations, and to identify the best ways to make and test new crosses. They grew sweet corn trials in six locations for two years. These locations were in Oregon, California, and Wisconsin, and while they were all organic, they ranged in soil type, fertility, and irrigation regime. Growing in so many environments helped them find which varieties could grow well regardless of the environment. But it’s not realistic to grow so many trials on a regular basis, so they wanted to see which characteristics of a variety are stable everywhere.  Find out, and learn about their new 'Honey Badger' sweet corn, which is available from Fruition Seeds at https://seedalliance.org/2021/sweet-corn-lessons-on-breeding-for-organic-systems/. Photo credit: Fruition Seeds