Main Funder : Horizon Europe (Innovation Action), the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation and UK Research and Innovation
ORC Staff Contact : Charlotte Bickler
Project Aims:
LIVESEEDING will contribute to the upscaling of organic production in Europe through:
Improving availability of organic plant reproductive material of organic cultivars of a large range of crops, bred for improved diversity and adaptation to local conditions, and
Strengthening and diversifying the organic seed sector informed by market demands.
LIVESEEDING contributes to the transition towards environmentally friendly, climate-neutral, healthy, and fair food systems through further development: 1) cultivars suited for organic and low external input production; 2) novel governance models linking breeders with value chain actors and citizens with local food production, and 3) awareness around the importance of biodiversity for our food and health. LIVESEEDING addresses the topics in a holistic multi-actor, multi-stakeholder participatory approach. It focuses on the 3 main drivers for change: 1) the supply and 2) the demand of organic seed and cultivars, and 3) enabling frameworks and roadmaps through active policy dialogue with national and European authorities and policymakers. LIVESEEDING provides science-based evidence and best practice solutions to achieve 100% organic seed.
While European legislation already requires the use of organic seeds in organic agriculture, the continued granting of derogations for non-organic seeds discourages entrepreneurship in organic seed. Horizon Europe will provide much-needed resources to leading sector organisations in LIVESEEDING to overcome the practice of derogations and make organic seeds a reality in Europe. Also for the first time, the new EU regulation has set a definition for ‘organic varieties’ and recently published implementing directives as regards derogation for the release of organic plant varieties suitable for organic production Directive (EU) 2022/1647 and Directive (EU) 2022/1648.
ORC's Role:
ORC will help facilitate the uptake of Organic Heterogeneous Material (OHM), such as the ORC Wakelyns Population (YQ), on the market and provide inputs for adjusting testing and registration protocols, in the framework of the European Commission’s temporary experiment on organic varieties registration. For post-registration cultivar testing, ORC in conjunction with Organic Arable, will lead on advancing on-farm cultivar evaluation and help to implement a European interactive platform for on-farm trials based on participatory organic networks across Europe.
ORC will also work to develop business models and business plans for SMEs in the organic seed and breeding sector to scale-up and consequently increase profitability of the sector. On-farm demonstrations will strengthen knowledge sharing and cooperation between the different actors, stakeholders, value chain partners and consumers.
Analysing and interpreting field data on organic winter wheat: We are entering our fifth season of data collection on variety performance across a network of organic farms, building on work in Liveseed (see: Agronomic and genetic assessment of organic wheat performance in England: a field-scale cultivar evaluation with a network of farms) and the LiveWheat project. In collaboration with Organic Arable, we have demonstrated that field-scale networked trials can deliver robust comparisons of varieties across different farm environments. This allows organic farmers to have access to better information about how varieties may be expected to perform on their farm compared to AHDB’s Recommended List where even the untreated plots are treated with a large amount of synthetic nitrogen. The five years of data highlight the key role of weed competition in organic systems and will be drawn together for scientific publication in 2025.
Expanding the approach to field beans: We are working to apply our learnings from the winter wheat variety testing to on-farm field bean trials. In 2024, we are conducting a plot trial of the most common faba bean varieties at Herefordshire and Ludlow College. This will enable us to gain insight into the agronomic challenges in faba bean production and determine whether variety choice can play a significant role considering the much more limited choice of varieties available for this crop.
Knowledge Exchange and Dissemination: In addition to data collection and analysis, we continue to actively engage in sharing our findings with the wider community. This has involved hosting meetings/events and working to deliver individual farm reports for those farmers that have conducted strip trials over multiple years. Working with ITAB in France, we coordinate the work across Europe on ‘Advancing On-Farm Cultivar Evaluation’ and there are 18 case studies within the project learning from one another’s experiences.
Organic Heterogeneous Material: We continue to be engaged in the uptake and development of evolutionary breeding and genetically diverse plant populations/heterogeneous material. Within LiveSeeding, we have been working to support the delivery of a series of webinars for people working in this area across Europe to learn more about the application of heterogeneous material in practice. These are available to watch on the project YouTube channel.
Project Living Lab Development: All this work is underpinned by the LiveCrop Living Lab which we are developing in collaboration with a range of people from across the organic sector who are interested in progressing towards the use of more organic seed and varieties suitable for organic farming systems. The living lab approach works to delivery participatory action research that considers the systemic challenges and opportunities that the sector faces when working towards this ambition. Taking this into account, work on viable financing models for organic variety testing and breeding in the UK is one area that will be progressed in the project in coming months.
Project leader and partners:
LIVESEEDING is coordinated by FiBL Europe and brings together 37 partners covering 16 European countries – 14 EU countries, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
