Our breeding for organic cropping systems (BOPS) project is nearing the end of its first year. The project has endured a few setbacks but continues to move forward on the goal of providing more variety options for organic corn, soybean, wheat, and peanut in the Southeastern US.

Dr. Major Goodman, NCSU corn breeder, continues work on developing organic corn hybrids with a specific gametophytic gene that does not allow pollination by non-gametophytic corn types, thus organic corn varieties with the gametophytic gene would not cross pollinate with genetically modified corn. Major has had success in connecting with other corn breeders working with corn lines containing this gametophytic gene. With these corn lines it will be possible to make crosses back to gametophytic corn lines developed at NCSU. Such genetically diverse crosses will ultimately lead to higher yielding hybrids with this outcrossing barrier.

Dr. Tommy Carter, soybean breeder with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service, is currently searching over 20,000 soybean genotypes within the USDA soybean germplasm collection for characteristics that contribute to improved ability to compete with weeds. He has successfully screened about 300 of these genotypes for qualities such as early increased leaf area, early increased height and width, and overall increased canopy vigor. Additionally, Dr. Carter has made crosses between large leaved and long petioled soybean genotypes. These crosses may result in soybean genotypes that cover the ground quickly and minimize the light that reaches emerging weeds.

Dr. Paul Murphy, NCSU small grains breeder, has taken on a new PhD. graduate student to work on the wheat component of the BOPS project. Please welcome Margaret Worthington to the BOPS team. Margaret and Dr. Murphy will ramp up efforts this coming wheat season to screen over 100 genotypes for wheat varieties that can tolerate or suppress Italian ryegrass infestations. Margaret and Dr. Murphy will be rating these genotypes on their ability to emerge and grow quickly, resist Hessian fly, successfully tiller, and vigorous leaf characteristics. Developing improved techniques for competitive wheat genotypes will also be a part of this experiment. Dr. Murphy and Margaret will also run a greenhouse experiment to screen the national core collection of winter wheat for allelopathic qualities – that is the ability to suppress competing plants such as Italian ryegrass through the exudation of chemicals through the wheat roots.

Dr. Tom Isleib, NCSU peanut breeder, has focused on searching the peanut core genetics collection to find genotype resistance to the seedling ‘damping off’ disease complex which includes Fusarium, Rhizoctonia, Pythium, and Aspergillus. No previous breeding has been done for such diseases in peanut because seed treatment is so cheap and effective, thus Dr. Isleib has had to establish testing protocols to create enough of a disease infestation to detect differences between genotypes without killing all genotypes. This has proved quite difficult for some of the specific pathogen inoculations while other disease screening protocols are effective and potentially resistant genotypes have been identified in an initial trial. A field experiment was planted to test eight publicly available peanut varieties in various organic weed management systems. Unfortunately, damping off diseases created such sporadic peanut emergence that the experiment had to be discontinued. Dr. Isleib will continue a second season of greenhouse disease resistance screening this winter.

Michael Sligh of the Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI-USA) has taken the cause of organic variety availability and general neglect of public crop breeding to the national stage. RAFI is working to convince legislators that more funding in public breeding is critical for the next farm bill. Specifically, Mr. Sligh and RAFI want to see funding that results in regional public cultivar releases.

In June, Dr. Mary Peet, the USDA CSREES national organic program leader and former North Carolina State Professor of Horticulture, visited with Dr. Chris Reberg-Horton, Dr. George Place and breeders involved in the BOPS project while touring relevant research sites. We are very hopeful that this kind of national attention to our project will lead to a BOPS funding renewal in two years, allowing us to sustain the long term vision of this project.