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"In organic agriculture we have a lot of room for improvement in terms of productivity," Stone, a graduate student in the horticulture department at the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences said earlier this month at the Southeast Regional Fruit and Vegetable Conference in Savannah. "We need to think about the crops that we’re growing in our organic systems and making sure we select varieties that thrive in conditions unique to that system."
While resistance to disease and insects are assets that all farmers want in their crops, other desirable attributes are fairly specific to each production practice, Stone said.
Conventional and large-market farmers need plants that produce as many uniform fruits and veggies as possible in a narrow window of time to facilitate harvest. They often need their produce to be tough enough to endure shipping and to meet grocery store size and color requirements.
"Organics are only 4 percent of U.S. food market," Stone said. "It’s growing rapidly every year, but it’s still a tiny part of the market, so seed companies are not breeding for organic growers. It’s just economics."
That’s where public university breeding programs come in, she said.
The result will be a flavorful, disease-resistant, compact melon plant, producing small, farmers-market-ready, "personal-size" melons that leave plenty of room between rows to make manual weeding easier.
When the melon is released, it will be adapted to grow in Georgia - where watermelons are big business, but almost none of the production is organic.
Both organic vegetable breeders, like Stone, and conventional breeders who work with row crops believe that the traits carried by some of these older and native varieties could help make all agriculture more sustainable. It’s just a matter of supporting the research of scientists who are working to investigate these plants and breed the improved traits into our current crops.