The approach and "why" of Plant Breeding For Permaculture

[agrorev]

It seems like local adaptation, perennialization, disease resistance/vigor, and in general crops that allow us to do less maintenance, preparation, or other work are all qualities high on the list to select for in plant breeding for permaculture.  Also plants with new functional qualities either culinary or nectary, biomass, etc. as well as plants that are bred specifically to fit into a polyculture.  One thing about permaculture's general prescription of polycultures is that polycultures are often highly variety dependent; that is, a specific quality of the variety, its habit/form, size, other quality is what makes it succeed in the polyculture.  The landrace gardening approach of starting with a mass cross of genetically diverse parent types, and generally breeding plants for increased fertility, pollinator attraction, and local adaptability is also part of the toolkit of plant breeding for permaculture.


Some good quotes from:
vimeo.com/67981516  Panel of Public Domain Plant Breeding

Carol Deppe:

Agriculture to a serious extent, and plant breeding to a serious extent is regional..the best we can do as either independent breeders like most of us, or as a private or a university breeder, is to go ahead and do our main job which is developing crops for our area. But then when we have done that, make that germ plasm available, and swap it with friends and have it tested in other areas where we think it might be useful...

You don't necessarily need to breed deliberately for organics in order to make a valuable contribution to it...when I think of what I want for a plant thats gonna do well in an organic system Ive got this kind of model in my mind thats some combination of what I want from the plant and how little I actually prefer to do myself. And its that Ii take the seed--I dont have to treat with anything--and I poke it in the ground ,and I come back when its time to harvest.  There are some crops and some varieties that you can come pretty close to that with.

I think that very often many of the advances in agriculture are things we'd prefer not to do if we have a choice about it.  As plant breeders we're in a somewhat unique situation in that we can breed for not having to do things. So for example if we can breed varieties that don't need seed treatments, thats one step.
Instead of spraying with pesticides we can breed varieties where we don't have to do that. Instead of having to do really seious weed control, we can breed varieties that grow so vigorously that they simply overhwelm the weeds, and so on. So to some extent I think what the ideal plant crop variety for organic agriculture is, is one in which we plant breeders have really done our jobs.

Ivan Michurin emphasizes also the inherently local/region nature of plant breeding, acclimatizing new varieties, and how to most effectively combine the influence of regional, developmental, and genetic conditions in selection/hybridization (especially regarding perennial fruiters).  From Selected Works, p. 157

The only correct method for solving the problem (of plant acclimatization) is to raise new local varieties for every district from seeds. Furthermore in order to improve their quality, it is necessary to hybridize the old hardy local varities with the best of the foreign ones.

In cases where there are no local varieties of a given plant, the hardy parent should be selected from among the wildlings that grow in countries with the most appropriate climatic conditions. When pairing the parent plants the most distant and least closely related varities should be preferred, because if this requirement is fulfilled hybrids are obtained that most easily and completely become adapted to the external conditions of a new locality.

They give rise to more vigorous and sturdier individuals. Whereas if more closely related varities are crossed, particularly such as have been growing near each other in a given locality and on similar soil, weak and sickly crossbreds are usually attained that stubbornly retain the negative hereditary properties of the parent plants and are therefore poorly adaptable to the conditions of a new locality. Thus the unity of the laws of creation is proven once more: just as conjugation, particularly between distant forms, is necessary for the primitive one-celled organisms, so among the multicellular plants is there a similar necessity for refreshing vitality in the progeny obtained by such means

[nicolas]

So true, thanks.

I think that with time we'll breed polycultures rather than plants. I see two approaches. The first is to fine-tune by screening or breeding our cultivars to fit the polyculture, the other is to landrace the different species of the polyculture and so to landrace the polyculture to see what fits.


I think that most pictures we see of recent three sisters implementations may hide that the beans are not bred for shade tolerance and so produce a lot of vegetation that is coll for pictures, but not so much of beans. Carole Deppe talks about a special bean that is good for the polyculture. I have to get some seeds of that. and in another nursery i've seen a bean that is half-runner and the description says that this caracteristic can make it a good candidate for three sisters. Just an example that came to mind.

[agrorev]

You're right nicolas; I think we should avail ourselves to both approaches. It should be fruitful to combine the fine tuned, incremental approach and the sort of random approach of seeing what new characteristics might naturally arise in an adapted landrace and then see how they might fit together.