Evaluation of Wheat Cultivars to Test Indirect Selection for Organic Conditions

Abstract

There is debate regarding direct or indirect selection for organic conditions. Our objective was to evaluate the progress of indirectly selecting organic cultivars in conventional environments. Canadian spring wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) cultivars, developed for conventional environments from 1885 to 1999 and from 1975 to 2009, respectively, were grown in two separate experiments to assess progress of yield and associated agronomic traits due to breeding. The first experiment evaluated 27 cultivars in organic and conventional conditions for 3 yr (2002, 2003, and 2004), on three sites in western Canada. In the second experiment, eight cultivars were evaluated in organic conditions in 2010 and 2011 at the University of Alberta, Canada. The first experiment showed that breeding had improved yield and most associated traits only in conventional systems and a few associated traits in organic conditions. The second experiment showed that breeding had made significant improvements in yield and test weight in organic conditions. This study suggests that with sufficient quality and disease resistance criteria in place for the breeding of wheat in conventional environments, it may be possible to concomitantly improve wheat yield destined for organic growing conditions. However, fewer associated traits showed significant improvement in organic conditions and improvement rates were lower than in conventional conditions. This suggests that optimizing trait performance in organic conditions should include organic conditions during breeding and selection.