Farmer Involvement In Agro-Ecological Research – The Organic On-Farm Wheat Variety Trials In Hungary

The acreage of organic farming is constantly increasing in Hungary. The cultivation of cereals – and within it – the production of winter wheat is of main importance in organic field crop production. However, it encounters various difficulties. As official post-registration variety trials only exist under conventional farming conditions, OMKi started participatory organic on-farm variety tests in 2012, with the involvement of volunteer farmers all over Hungary. In the past seven years, nearly 50 varieties and more than 20 farms have been included in the tests which were conducted with the aim to find the most suitable varieties for high quality organic wheat production and to exclude the inappropriate ones for respective production regions. Our results demonstrate that there is great potential in choosing the varieties best suited, and that it is possible to achieve both high yield and excellent quality also in organic farming, when applying the suitable cultivars.