Liveseed
Project description
The objectives and aims of LIVESEED are to improve transparency and competitiveness of the organic seed and breeding sector and encourage greater use of organic seed. LIVESEED strives to:
- Foster harmonised implementation of the EU organic regulation on organic seed
- Strengthen organic seed databases in the whole EU
- Investigate socio-economic aspects related to production and use of organic seed
- Improve availability and quality of organic seed
- Develop guidelines for organic cultivar testing and registration
- Develop innovative breeding approaches suited to organic farming
- Widen the choice of organic cultivars meeting the demand of farmers, processors, retailers and consumers
- Research activities of LIVESEED will cover five main crop categories (legumes, vegetables, fruit trees, cereals and fodder crops) considering different farming systems and pedoclimatic zones across Europe
Contribution by OPB
The work at OPB is localised in work package 3 of LIVESEED, which deals with measures to accelerate the breeding process and the improved adaptation of new varieties. In the OPB, together with the partners, wheat lines with new and partly pyramidised resistance genes against stone blight of wheat are to be identified and markers for these resistance genes are to be made available. Common bunt is mainly relevant in organic farming because the disease is transmitted via seed and is controlled in conventional farming by chemical seed dressing. Pyramidisation is an accumulation of different resistance genes in a wheat variety, which prevents the resistance of the variety from being quickly breached by the pathogen causing the disease. Markers for these resistance genes first make this pyramidisation possible and also save the breeder from having to handle aggressive isolates of the pathogen, which have not yet arrived in the farmers fields.