Organic Plant Breeders in Europe

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I’m building an overview of organic plant breeders in Europe. First of all to identify interesting varieties to grow that have been bred for organic conditions. Second with an eye to network and learn from these people.

Come help me get an overview.

So far I’ve mostly found plant breeders in the German-speaking countries. My sources have been Bioverita, a non-profit whose slogan is that organic growing should begin with plant breeding. (@julia.dakin should be happy to know that slogan is out there).

Bioverita has a great overview of almost 200 varities that have been bred for organic conditions and also details who bred them. I’ve gone through all of them and noted down the breeders - for some of them where they work (the Northern German breeders are especially interesting for me for example). Bioverita also partners with KulturSaat, ReinSaat, Projekt Saatgut and Sativa.bio. All of these organisations are involved in the biodynamic movement.

So now my first question is: Where are the organic breeders in the Francophone countries, in Poland, Italy etc?

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In Italy arcoiris.it

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In Switzerland Sativa has 2 breeders, I know only one profesional plant breeder working for organic systems in France - so excepting the industry - : see aubepin.fr. Pierre Dorand is a great guy

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I tend to buy my seeds from this company , their site has a list of breeders in France and across europe Semences potagères

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In France you have

Kokopelli, Semences biologiques et reproductibles | Semailles ,

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Do Kokopelli work directly with plant breeders in Europe or feature them somehow? I know they distribute a lot of Frank Morton’s seed and also have a lot of the German-bred varieties found in catalogues like Bingenheimer. I’m curious if there’s a network of francophone organic plant breeders I’m not aware of.

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I don’t know….

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Though @Bruno can be considered as one, on a market gardener scale, having crossed and selected multiple tomato lines over the years, for example.

Pierre Dorand has registered under MHB legislation a melon which is called “Patoutafaifix”, meaning “not-totally-homogenous”, for example.

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Hi Malte,

Here are two dutch breeders who are organic or partially organic:

kokopelli states who propegated the seeds for them right, but i am guessing your focussed towards breeding instead of propegation..

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Thanks! Yes exactly, the breeding part - not just seed production. Although any good seed producer will know that selection never ends and if you’re not making breeding choices, you will inadvertently select for other things.