ABSTRACT
ESTELLE SERPOLAY, NICOLAS SCHERMANN, JULIE DAWSON, EDITH T. LAMMERTS VAN BUEREN, ISABELLE GOLDRINGER, AND VÉRONIQUE CHABLE
12.1 INTRODUCTION
Seed is an input of importance in agriculture. For each crop, farmers have to choose, according to their farming system, from a range of different types of varieties, based on genetic, phenotypic, commercial, social or cultural characteristics. In Europe, the seed market is regulated: commercialized seeds have to meet a number of standards set by law. The main one is the registration of the variety in an official catalogue, which requires it to meet Distinctiveness, Uniformity and Stability (DUS) criteria [1]. These criteria are evaluated by visual assessments in trials performed by specialized institutions. Today, most marketed varieties (created by seed companies) are F1 hybrids or pure lines, which are visually very uniform and stable since they are genetically homogeneous (all the plants of the variety have the same genotype). Other types of varieties, like populations or open pollinated varieties are less homogeneous (more diverse) from a genetic
FIGURE 1: Strategies of organic and conventional farming systems, focused on seeds and variety use.
