Grain breeding: hardworking organic wheat producers from Lake Zurich

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Finding new wheat varieties that can be grown organically is scientific research. Its results can be seen in a piece of land in Feldbach ZH between Seestrasse and Lake Zurich. The fields are worked by the employees of grain grower Peter Kunz. Operating under the acronym GZPK today, the company was founded 35 years ago by Peter Kunz. As a pioneer, he recognized early on the need to produce grain, especially for organic and biodynamic farming.

The nonprofit has been supported by the Coop Sustainability Fund for over 20 years. Besides wheat, the company also produces new varieties for spelled, triticale (a mix of durum wheat and rye), emmer, peas, lupine, sunflower and corn. For all these products, artificial fertilizers or herbicides cannot be used for plant protection in organic farming.

The company’s success is great. About half of the organically grown wheat in Switzerland comes from the varieties grown here. They are also common in southern Germany and France. A kind of big star: the genus Wiwa, approved since 2005, makes up the main part. It is also used in Coop’s Naturaplan organic breads. Wheat breeder Michael Locher explains that growing a new organic wheat variety is an extremely time-consuming task. “It takes 20 years from the first crossbreeding to the time that farmers can plant the new variety in their fields for the first time.” Pure breeding takes eight to nine years. Approval takes three to five years, followed by deployment and marketing. The variety should emerge from hundreds of seedlings.

“We hand-cross 100 to 150 wheat hybrids each year,” Locher says. “We’re bringing together varieties that we think will ideally grow in future environmental and production conditions, even if we don’t know how.” About 4000 individual spikes with good characteristics were collected from the crosses and then replanted. Only about 10 percent have proven themselves and switched to parcelled agriculture.

Therefore, the effort to create a new organic wheat variety is huge. But it’s worth breeding for years without a break, Locher says. For example, if a new disease emerges that could threaten existing wheat varieties, wheat specialists can often turn to existing seeds that have not yet been used but have proven to be resistant in this exact situation. With the annual registration types, newly registered candidates can quickly find the way to apply.

Working for the GZPK for eleven years, Locher also knows farming from a practical side. Besides his part-time work, he is also engaged in farming. Its aim is not to find the highest yielding or protein-rich varieties, but rather to find varieties that provide reliable yields even under difficult conditions and at the same time guarantee good processing quality. Because organic wheat not only needs to grow well in the farmer’s field, but also needs to be processed perfectly by the bakers.

Enormous climatic fluctuations are making it increasingly important to know which varieties can cope. The last few years have been just as interesting to growers as it has been for agriculture.

Organic breeding of wheat is fundamental to the future of organic agriculture. With this, for example, differences in yield between conventionally grown and organic wheat can be minimized. That’s why the Coop Sustainability Fund supports seed breeding for organic wheat and spelled. A tangible achievement from this: the organic wheat variety Wiwa from the Peter Kunz grain farm in Feldbach, which the fund has been promoting for over 20 years. Today Wiwa is the most sought after variety in organic grain growing in Switzerland.

Source :Blick