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Letters
Dear NAS Members,
I would like to present to you an argument in favour of using allotments to breed modern varieties suitable for gardeners, also improving their yield and adaptability to climate change.
Background
Allotment holders and fellow gardeners have inherited a wide range of heritage/ heirloom varieties of vegetables. These were selected
by our forefathers, most of who spent much of their time in the field, farming by hand or animal power, and ate their crops. Living close to their crops allowed them to spot improved forms in their own or their neighbours and, over thousands of years, the stock improved. We are now putting these heritage varieties into museums (seed banks) to emphasise their enormous value, the fragility of their survival and that their improvement has largely come to an end. At the same time, the climate under which our crops grow and the food requirements of families is changing.
Many allotment holders come from diverse backgrounds, countries and ethnicities and their experiences of growing crops
in different climates could be particularly valuable in these times of global warming causing climate change and increased variability. Allotments themselves have a wealth of resources to support crop improvement: in the UK they have land (often very valuable) in more-or-less every village, town and city, and rich human resources with a large and diverse membership, local committees to organise allotments, meetings associated with gardening activities and
an organisation which, though mainly local, extends to regional, national and international levels. Their seed activities include informal seed saving and swapping amongst friends, more formal ‘seed swap shops’, allotment shops selling commercial seed, and formal occasions in which produce is judged and prizes awarded, though little evidence of plant breeding initiatives.
Participatory plant breeding (PPB) is a new approach being used in developing countries by which classically-trained plant breeders work closely with the many small-scale farmers there. Apart from accessing seed with the desired traits from the breeder, typically everything is done on the smallholdings, with the smallholders driving the selection. In this way, they obtain exactly the varieties they want. These smallholders are in many ways similar to allotment holders; both eat the food they grow and exchange seed and ideas amongst their communities.
The problem
Can new varieties be bred that are adapted to the needs of gardeners and to the changing climate?
The proposal
The Background suggests that allotments have a working seed system but it lacks a breeding component. Could something similar to PPB work in such an environment? Our seed system is generally decentralised, but heritage varieties were also largely bred by many
individuals acting alone to gradually improve the entire stock of each crop with little or no knowledge of how each other was acting. There are thousands of allotments and these, whilst inefficient for breeding, may offer some compensating advantages.
• If several allotment groups set out to breed the same crop, this could result in the production of several varieties, each suited to different environments or needs.
• It would allow different approaches to be tried rather than just one, particularly likely since allotment holders have diverse histories and origins.
• It seems likely that any sustained activity is done at least partly for the challenge/enjoyment and a breeding component might increase this.
• It would naturally enable more activity to occur in the crops which were more important to allotment holders, and probably also gardeners.
Our forefathers improved their varieties so surely we can. Improving cross-pollinating crops is fairly straightforward (unless you want an F1 hybrid), involving identifying superior parents
from amongst modern and heritage varieties, allowing them to cross-pollinate in a relatively isolated place (someone’s garden?), selecting the best progeny, cross-pollinating these etc. Doing it for self-pollinated crops is even easier once you have forced the initial cross as isolation is less of an issue. At the same time, it would
be interesting (for universities/agricultural colleges?) to investigate whether:
• The diverse origins of many allotment holders add extra value to the breeding.
• Modern communication methods can help allotment holders to breed, e.g. by making it easy to acquire diverse seedlings.
• Modern communication systems can help market seed produced by a decentralized system.
• There are crops for which the uniformity of F1 hybrids is either an advantage or unimportant to gardeners (rather than a disadvantage).
If nearby, local allotments could team up with an agricultural college (or a heritage seed company even) to provide expertise for the breeding. The main question for The National Allotments Society and/or its Regional Representatives is whether we could beneficially add a knowhow, coordinating or even a marketing role? Perhaps
for other aspects it would be sufficient to transmit the idea (this document, our own website, hasa discussion forum etc.) to the allotment membership and let ‘one thousand flowers bloom’.
Richard Gibson Canterbury, Kent, UK nosbigrw@yahoo.com
Richard’s PPB projects have released cassava and sweet potato varieties in Africa. If you are interested in learning more there is a longer article with more background; please go to the members’ area of www.nsalg.org.uk
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