From 2017 to 2022, the Liveseed project focused on organic seed production in Europe, with a segment in France dedicated to creating new wheat populations. This initiative was driven by cooperatives like Cocebi (Burgundy), Biocer (Normandy), and Union Bio Semences (Ubios), an organic seed sorting station.
The project led to the creation of three new organic soft wheat populations in collaboration with Isabelle Goldringer from the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRAE). The work now continues under the Liveseeding project (2022-2026), with the aim of registering at least one population as Heterogeneous Biological Material (HBM), a new opportunity offered by the recent organic seed regulation.
“The goal is to create Heterogeneous Biological Material (HBM). This isn’t a variety, meaning it’s not stable and uniform plant material, but rather a diversified but characterized population freely defined by its specific traits. It’s a new type of cultivar,” explains Estelle Serpolay, who leads the group of farmers and cooperative technicians involved in the Liveseeding project.
Three Soft Wheat Populations
This type of cultivar meets several aspirations of organic producers, particularly the desire, beyond producing organic seeds, to have true organic breeding. This involves considering organic farming criteria from the start, such as disease resistance or quick soil coverage to compete with weeds, and ensuring that selection occurs under organic conditions.
“Ethically and physiologically, does it make sense to conduct selection under conventional production conditions and then produce seeds organically?” asks Estelle Serpolay. Several studies have shown that plants do not have the same biological functioning in organic versus conventional conditions.
Despite France being the world’s leading seed-producing power, it is not ahead in organic breeding: very few programs exist in both the private and public sectors. Other countries, like Germany, are much more involved in this area.
Practically speaking, under the Liveseed project, six parents were chosen for each created population. Each parent was then crossed with the other five varieties, and this was done in both directions (male and female). The offspring of these crosses were mixed and managed as a population.
This mixture of the offspring from 30 crosses is known as a “CCP” (Composite Cross Population), a highly diversified population.
In total, three soft wheat populations were created by farmers with INRAE’s support during this project, using parents from ancient local or modern varieties.
Participatory Selection
Once the crosses were made at INRAE, the CCPs were multiplied by the farmers on the cooperatives’ platforms. But the farmers’ role wasn’t limited to choosing the parents and multiplying the populations.
“A CCP is a single hyper-diversified population, composed of individuals whose specific traits we don’t fully know. It may seem challenging to work with such living material, but this significant diversity offers a fantastic playground for participatory selection. It’s possible to let it evolve naturally under field conditions to obtain populations adapted to the context of each region or farm. It’s also possible to guide it by selecting based on personal criteria. The farmers involved in the Liveseed and now Liveseeding projects understood this and embraced the process,” explains Estelle Serpolay. Alongside the creation and multiplication of the three CCPs, they developed their own selections.
“One farmer involved in the Liveseeding project, for example, conducted his own mass selection on one of the populations. During the harvest, he set aside a bunch of ears that appealed to him ‘with his farmer’s eye’ and then replanted that bunch. Another farmer conducted his own selection with a specific goal in mind: he wanted a hyper-early CCP to avoid heat stress. He identified and marked the earliest ears with a red thread, thus creating his own population. And it worked: his population is indeed much earlier. The process is long, but he now has nearly a hectare of this early population.”
Once the CCPs are obtained, the journey to HBM is still long.
No Registration, but a Notification
The Liveseed project has ended, but on-farm selection work continues within a new European project, Liveseeding, which took over in 2023. “In the Liveseeding project, our goal is to scale up the multiplication of the three populations created in the first Liveseed project, characterize them, and notify at least one population as HBM,” says the project’s coordinator.
HBM is not a variety, so it does not require registration with the Permanent Technical Committee for Plant Breeding (CTPS) to be marketed, but rather a “notification,” meaning a more or less precise description so that farmers know what they are buying. “The notification must describe how the HBM was created, the conditions under which it was multiplied, and what it is suited for. Any characteristics deemed useful can be added,” she explains.
For genetics, for instance, the parents used for the crosses can be specified, along with descriptions of the crosses, crossing directions, and the percentages of different offspring that make up the mix. The notification can also specify other characteristics of the HBM, at the creators’ discretion, such as 80% of the ears being bearded and 20% not bearded. These can be visual characteristics or relate to disease resistance, protein content, etc.
An Advantage against Climate Change
Another difference between a variety and HBM concerns commercialization: there is no registration and therefore no royalties for HBMs. “The economic model is different and still needs to be developed,” she notes.
Beyond organic farming, HBMs can offer significant advantages in improving crop resilience.
Since they are not composed of homogeneous individuals, populations are an asset in the context of climate change and especially in the face of climatic accidents. Having a field of 100% identical plants is advantageous under optimal production conditions but less so under adverse conditions. For example, in the case of extreme drought, introducing variability seems like a way to secure production.
However, the question of maintaining a selected population arises: how to preserve the desirable traits within an HBM? Over the years, the population will evolve, and the proportion of different offspring will change in response to the specific characteristics (soil, weather, management, sowing date, etc.) of each farm. Should we aim for regional HBMs or even smaller-scale ones? “There is still much to learn, including the potential of HBMs,” concludes Estelle Serpolay.
Organic Regulation Allows Heterogeneous Biological Material
Currently, European regulations require organic farmers to use organic seeds. However, depending on the crops, supply can be challenging. Exemptions for using untreated conventional seeds exist for certain species to address the lack of supply, but these exemptions will end by the end of 2035 with the new organic farming regulation that came into effect in January 2022. The goal of “100% organic seeds by 2036” will require having seeds produced under organic farming. The organic regulation ends these exemptions but allows the commercialization of seeds - and plants - of Heterogeneous Biological Material (HBM). A new chapter in organic seed breeding begins.
Heterogeneous Biological Material? What is it, and how does it differ from a variety?As its name suggests, HBM is characterized by its heterogeneity, which gives it greater resilience. It is not a set of plants with a unique and stable genome, as in a variety, but a set of plants with diverse genomes chosen and based on specific criteria. HBM seeds are included in the semences-biologiques.org database.
HBMs are not varieties, so they do not require registration with the Permanent Technical Committee for Plant Breeding (CTPS) to be marketed, but only a “notification.”