Innovative decentralised seed systems for bread-wheat evolutionary populations

Evolutionary Populations (EPs) of bread wheat, also known as Composite Cross Populations (CCPs), were used in a decentralised and participatory plant breeding Programme in the frame of the EU-funded research project SOLIBAM, starting from 2010. The population used was constituted at the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), Syria, with the aim to provide farmers with a highly diverse population that would enable to adapt to a wide range of environments and farming systems. The population was made from 2000 crosses derived from 200 parental lines. As part of another EU project (DIVERSIFOOD, 2015-2018), the Italian seed network Rete Semi Rurali (RSR) set up field trials at four locations to evaluate this EP alongside local varieties and variety mixtures. These trials included participatory evaluation and other on-farm activities, in which more than 350 farmers had participated. In 2017, the first batch of certified population seed became available on the seed market and the number of farmers who were able to access the EP (named ‘SOLIBAM tenero’) doubled. Furthermore, the EP started to enter both short and long value chains for the production of flour and baking products, such as bread or pizza.