8:30 Overview - Why Grow Our Own Seed?
Can we "demystify" seed growing, to return it to the hands of the farmer in the local economy?

Regional production of seed by farmers committed to maintaining and improving crop varieties adapted to local environmental conditions and cropping systems is a key component to a truly sustainable agriculture. In this way farmers raising seed for use in their egion can gain a better understanding of the inherent traits that contribute to the overall health, resiliency, and productivity of a crop in that climate.

Seed production in the area of intended use can provide an opportunity for a selective advantage for bioregional conditions, if the grower understands how to select for the best genetic combinations for the situation. Seed growing can also serve as a good alternative crop with practical use on one's own farm as well as for sale as a cash crop. Certainly it may also fulfill a sense of self-sufficiency and deep satisfaction that is lost if all inputs are purchased.

9:00 Plant Life Cycles and Reproductive Biology
Concept: By understanding the complete life cycle and basic reproductive biology of the crop species you are working with it becomes much easier to optimize the crop's ability to produce high quality seed. Many growers who are familiar with growing a particular crop as a vegetable are only growing the crop through a portion of its life cycle. To grow the same crop all the way through its reproductive stages may require different planting dates and different cultural techniques for producing seed. The crop may have entirely different seasonal requirements, including temperature, moisture, or fertility. Biennial crops in many cases must be treated as two separate crops to successfully produce seed. Many crops that are successful as vegetables in a particular climate may not be able to complete their life cycle satisfactorily in that same climate.

Differences in the mode of reproduction between self-pollinated species and cross-pollinated species, as well as differences between monoecious and dioecious cross-pollinated crops has a large bearing on the strategies used in crop isolation placement, seed field layout, pollinizer exposure, and selection strategies. Selection for reproductive fitness can depend on flower morphology, time of flowering, number of flowers, time of pollen shed, quantity of pollen, seed setting ability, and relative maturity of seed.

Action: This discussion will prompt growers to familiarize themselves more thoroughly with the crop species they intend to grow for seed. They will investigate time of planting, optimum growing conditions (temperatures and seasons), and whether a particular species of interest has specific varieties that will produce seed better than others in their climate. They will also investigate the pollination biology of their particular crops to find out if they can optimize it with production methods. They will also observe flowering patterns, looking for significant differences that can give them a selection differential for increasing reproductive fitness.

Outcome: Growers who understand how to evaluate the species and particular varieties of a species for its suitability to their location and production system will certainly increase their success of choosing suitable seed crops for their farm. Those using their knowledge and observations of the reproductive potential or fecundity of their crops and selecting the most reproductively fit individuals will increase their seed yielding ability in subsequent generations of growing the crop

10:15 Break

10:30 Whole Farm Seed Cropping Systems

Concepts: The farm is an ecosystem. The farmer is the keystone species. The farmer holds some of the organizing principles of the agroecosystem in mind. The soil seed bank holds others in genes. The engrained information of these principles merges with climatic energy and geologic material to produce the whole farm ecology. The farmer shapes the food relationships of his ecosystem community by his actions and how he "eats", that is, how he relates to (manages) the other living organisms about him, consciously or not.

A conscious approach toward the design of the agroecosystem may yield benefits to the farm economy and stability in the face of challenge. As a crop, seed conveys elements of diversification and stabilization through its blooming phase, and its long season as a sheltering refuge for beneficial insects and other biodiversity. The soil mulching effects of seed crops and their debris provide critical habitat for general predators like spiders and ground beetles that are the field's first line of defense against pest insects and slugs. Complex carbon compounds from stems and mature tissues degrades into stable humic compounds that persistently improve soil texture and nutrient exchange. There are many strategies for integrating seed cropping into the farm system, including double cropping, intercropping, borders, hedges and leys.Seed guilds (polycultures of non-crossing species), are designed to maximize seed production opportunity within each isolation area, and to have the greatest diversifying effect on species number within the field.

Making money from seed is truly the most difficult part of integrating seed production into the whole farm ecology. Seed is one of the best deals in nature, easily overproduced once targeted as a crop, and its storability means that oversupply can be persistent. There are many opportunities to ruin crop quality since seed is a long season (or two season) process. Often, ruin comes quietly and is recognized only after all the work is already in the bag. The three markets for seed in order of increasing risk, work and involvement are your own farm, seed company contracts, and direct to consumers. Each market has its blessings and its disappointments. In conclusion, we can say with certainty that growing seed will mix up your farm life.

Actions: This session discussion will compel farmers to look at their home landscape as a member rather than a master. They will read Wendell Berry's poem Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front like never before, and will understand that to be part of their ecosystem is economic madness, and they will laugh, when they believe it. Believers will stop killing what they don't know about, and will study the unknown to learn what it eats and what it feeds. The farmer will consider his competitors as food, and will direct food to his allies. A farmer who integrates seed into his crop mix will recognize an increase in insect diversity because flowers precede seed, and flowers are what beneficial insects relate to when they aren't eating or parasitizing sap-sucking and leaf-chewing insects. Farmers who diversify their seed growing interests can create seed guilds of non-crossing species within their crop fields. Flower diversity increases insect diversity. Insect diversity dampens population booms and busts that result in economic insults to the farmer.

Outcomes: Those who appreciate these concepts and take action on their home landscape will see changes in the ecological balance between plant and insect species. This is a dynamic non-linear system, so specific outcomes are dependent on initial conditions and ongoing fluctions of weather, farmer inputs, and food relationships. Anyone who says they can predict the specific results of specific actions without an ongoing knowledge of specific conditions is unbelievable. No ecological farming strategy rises to the level of accurate prediction of outcomes, any more than weather or economic forecasts. Believe that. Laugh.

12:00 Lunch

1:15 Self-Pollinated vs. Cross-Pollinated Crops
Concepts: The reproductive biology of these two groups calls for completely different strategies of genetic maintenance or improvement. Each 'pollination style' represents a different evolutionary strategy toward fitness. "Selfers" are conserving in approach, and have developed to stabilize and preserve good genetic combinations once they arise in the population. "Crossers" are incessant experimenters, and take every route toward assuring maximal mixing of genes with each generation. This strategy succeeds by covering over the effects of Idetrimental recessive genes, leading to overall fitness in the population. This group suffers when genetic diversity is narrowed by reproduction within small groups, causing the syndrome known as inbreeding depression.

2:15 Selecting from the Self-Pollinated Crops
Concepts: Self-pollinated crops tend toward genetic uniformity. Selection within uniform populations under unchallenging conditions does not produce genetic improvement. Growing large populations under challenging conditions may reveal genetic distinctions that are unobservable under normal conditions. These distinctions may have adaptive advantages for ecological farmers, making them candidates for selection, improvement and increase. In very uniform varieties with need of improvement, crossing to other varieties with complimentary traits is necessary to induce genetic variation. Selection for new stable varieties from crossed populations can begin with the F2 population, but is never complete before the F5 or F6 generation, even with allowances for tolerable variation. Different selection strategies during these genetically segregating generations will yield different results. One course of selection produces pure-line varieties, another strategy, creates multi-line landraces. Selection occurs throughout the plant life cycle, from seedling to mature seedhead stage. Selection for disease resistance must be carried out either in disease nursery or epidemic conditions to preclude escapes (lucky plants) from posing as resistant germplasm.

3:30 Break

3:45 Maintaining Healthy Cross Pollinated Crops
Concept: Open-pollinated varieties of cross-pollinated crop species are very difficult to maintain without them either becoming "too wild and wooly" with too many off types, or becoming inbred because of "too much selection", i.e. too narrow of a selection. Maintaining a good O.P. in a crosser is becoming a lost art. To understand the methodology of selecting in crossers one must understand the population structure in crossers and the nature of selfs, sibs, and out-crosses in the wild orgies that crossers have whenever you reproduce them. We will also consider selecting several traits at once and the pitfalls that may happen if one gets too "picky."

Action: Growers producing cross-pollinated seed crops will view these crops in a considerably different light than they have before, understanding that the important traits in each crosser crop must be well understood before they can be selected. Then growers can start to select in their crossers to really help keep them clean without bringing about inbreeding depression.

Outcome: The farmers who utilize the concepts of selecting crossers will gain great benefit from having seed of a much more productive and true-to-type variety that will therefore be much more desirable in the marketplace. Well-maintained crossers will be much less prone to inbreeding depression as well and because inbreeding almost always lessens seed yields farmers should certainly be able to produce higher seed yields.

5:00 Selecting for Resistance to Diseases and Insects

Concepts: See Effective Trial Strategies for Crop Improvement -

Farmers and summer workshop attendees at Demonstration Sites will learn:

1) How to identify diseases symptoms of the pathogen of interest in the field.
2) At what stages in the plant's life cycle is a particular disease best assessed?
3) How to plant a replicated trial & score (1-9 scale) varieties for important traits.
4) What level of HR is meaningful and worthy of selection

Actions: Farmers and summer workshop attendees at Demonstration Sites will act on

1) Planting trials for evaluation purposes and monitoring on-farm diseases.
2) They will identify, screen, and select for HR to diseases at appropriate levels.
3) They will select for good reproductive characters and fecundity.
4) They will harvest seed of the crops they are working with efficiently and properly.

Outcomes: Farmers and summer workshop attendees will use these skills:

1) They will use on-farm trials for their most important decisions on seed crops.
2) They will use on-farm trials to determine which varieties to select for HR.
3) They will develop their own versions of crop varieties with increased HR.
4) They will improve reproductive traits in their seed crops and increase seed yields.

 7:30 Slide Show: Wild Garden Agroecosystems - Frank , Photos by Karen Morton

Day Two - Crop Improvement for Organic Farming Systems

8:30 Planting and Managing Effective Trials
Concept: See Effective Trial Strategies for Crop Improvement
Sections on: Plot Requirements & Evaluation of the Trial

Actions & Outcomes: See Effective Trial Strategies for Crop Improvement

9:30 Discussion: Traits Worth Considering Improving in Vegetables
Concept: There are certain traits that are really worth our effort when we do selection, but it's not always obvious which traits these are. Some traits are more important than other traits depending on the cropping location and farmer's needs. How do we decide which to work with? Frank and John will discuss with the class how this process is done and we'll list which traits are generally important across crop types. We'll also discuss which cross-pollinated could be used for test crops for the Field Demonstration Plots.

Action: Farmers will revisit which traits are truly worthy when selecting a seed crop, and begin to select all seed crops with a better sense of balance in selection priorities.

Outcome: Selection has the power to improve many of the traits that will give the grower an improved variety. Growers will select on the most important traits and over time they will produce the very best versions of their varieties, which will bring them increased sales.

10:30 Break

11:00 Revitalizing Established Varieties
Concepts: Heirloom and commercial "workhorse" varieties are often received in various states of worthiness as regards vigor, trueness, and eating qualities. Different strategies of restoration apply depending on the 'pollination style' of the species, the dominant or recessive character of desirable or detrimental traits-the goals of the project.

1:00 Northeast Vegetable Diseases; Seedlings to Seed-bearing Crops
Frank and John will lead a discussion on the most troublesome diseases of the Northeast, allowing the group to rate them by their importance in their operations.

2:20 Break

2:40 Lettuce: a Case Study in Crop Improvement
Concept: To improve any crop the breeder must first know the germplasm--the different character traits and variations within the species by which we define our varieties. To improve crops for disease resistance one must first identify the most resistant varieties available, the varieties that maintain good culinary and commercial qualities under challenge, and the varieties that have exceptional qualities but very poor performance under challenge (the "prima donnas"). Each will play its role in crop improvement.

The disease nursery is used to identify disease resistance and susceptibility by applying pathogenic challenge uniformly across an entire replicated trial area. Trials are randomized and scored blind using a 1-9 rating for each trait, with repeated scoring throughout the entire plant life cycle. Trial varieties with highest scores for important traits proceed to future trial years as putatively resistant strains. These may enter cross breeding trials if qualities are exceptional in some traits and deficient in others. Varieties with high scores all around are candidates for commercial production. This is an ongoing process, with additional varieties entering the disease nursery each year to replace low scoring strains, while the best varieties cycle back for recurrent selection under challenge.