Abstract
Global agrobiodiversity is threatened by the replacement of traditional, locally adapted crop varieties with high-yielding and hybrid varieties during the past 60 years, resulting in associated losses of crop, variety, and allele diversity. Locally adapted, traditional varieties are known to perform equal or even better under environmental stress conditions and to be more resilient in unstable cultivation environments. Therefore, European organic vegetable breeding organizations conserve local, traditional varieties and breed new varieties in low-input organic environments, aiming to increase the range of varieties for sustainable cultivation under sub-optimal growing conditions. However, performance of organic vegetable varieties, in comparison to conventional high-yielding and hybrid varieties, under different environmental conditions has not been intensively researched. To contribute to this scientific field, we compared the agronomic and quality performance between hybrid, conventional, and organic tomato and sweet pepper varieties, two economically important species on the EU market under a) well-watered and b) drought stress conditions, using five different varieties (i.e., 30 varieties) as replicates in each of the six groups. Performance of both species was negatively affected by drought, regardless of the breeding background. Equally, for tomato and sweet pepper, hybrids produced higher amounts of individual fruits, however total yield in kg was comparable for hybrid, conventional and organic plants. Considering the agro-ecological importance of enlarging and securing variety diversity in light of changing environmental conditions, we show that the assumed benefits of the hybrids can also be delivered by the organic and conventional varieties. These varieties should be considered as an important source of genetic resources, supporting farmers to adapt to their local climate and environmental conditions in the future.
Highlights
Agrobiodiversity and the associated diversity of crop varieties is one of the global keystones in farming to secure stable harvest and livelihood under changing environmental and socioeconomic conditions (FAO, 2018)
We focused on tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) and sweet pepper (Capsicum spp.) as model species, since they are economically highly important for the EU vegetable market and popular among consumers
The “GlmmTMB” model showed that drought stress resulted in significantly lower fruit weight and fruit number for the hybrid organic and the conventional group (p < 0.001, Table 2, see Figure 3A)
Summary
Agrobiodiversity and the associated diversity of crop varieties is one of the global keystones in farming to secure stable harvest and livelihood under changing environmental and socioeconomic conditions (FAO, 2018). A major ongoing threat to agrobiodiversity is the loss of traditional, locally adapted crop varieties for cereal, and vegetable species (MEA, 2005). Genetic resources in the form of vegetable variety diversity are declining all over the world at a rate 1–2% annually (Da Silva Dias, 2010). This progressive concentration on a limited amount of commercial high-yielding and hybrid varieties is further promoted by usage restrictions via patents and variety protection laws and the privatization of seed material (Kotschi and Wirz, 2015; Messmer et al, 2015). Locally adapted, traditional varieties can deliver equal or even higher yields under suboptimal conditions and are known to be more resilient in unstable cultivation environments (Ficiciyan et al, 2018)
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