Organic agriculture and evolutionary populations to merge mitigation and adaptation strategies to fight climate change

Abstract

Organic agriculture mitigates the effects of climate change, is more sustainable than industrial agriculture, provides more nutritious and healthy food, and several ecosystem services. However, its potential to feed the world is largely unexplored, due to the limited number of breeding programs addressing the need of varieties specifically adapted to organic systems. Consequently, organic farmers often cannot find organically produced seed of suitable varieties. This paper presents a plant breeding scheme which combines the use of evolutionary population with decentralized and participatory selection, to serve a multitude of diverse target populations, from environments including those of organic agriculture.