‘Thinking differently about cultivation’ Variety development and seed production for organic farming have been fully integrated into the Bejo organization from the start. This results in a cross-fertilization that helps advance both organic and traditional breeding.
Bejo has been producing organic seed since 1996. What started with a limited number of varieties of a handful of crops has grown into a broad range in the past 22 years. Bejo’s assortment of organically produced seed now includes more than 40 crops of 150 different varieties. And those numbers just keep growing. Our most important markets are in Western Europe and North America. Bejo has now extended its organic agriculture supply in the Netherlands to include lettuce crops of the Rumours (Iceberg) and Agribel (Batavia) varieties.
Selecting suitable varieties for organic farming
“Bejo made a conscious choice to integrate the organic business as a fully fledged part of the company from the beginning,” says Bram Weijland, coordinator of Organic Affairs. This has allowed the young business unit to benefit from the seed production and breeding knowledge and expertise that Bejo has built up over the decades.
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In developing a selection of varieties suitable for organic cultivation, Bejo breeders are able to draw on the large library of varieties and lines collected over the decades.
Thinking big
Bejo’s international infrastructure is also worth its weight in gold. “As part of Bejo, we can think big,” Weijland says. “For example, in all the major countries we have organic test fields where we can make selections from the many conventional hybrids for organic farming. If you select only from organic varieties, you miss out on scale. In addition to this, the promising hybrids are tested under organic conditions over several years before being finally selected for sale.” Scale also enables Bejo to develop innovative solutions, such as an alternative to seed coating. “In conventional cultivation we’re used to giving the crops a protected start by applying a coating around the seed that has fungicide in it,” Weijland says. “In organic cultivation we can’t do that. Working with the University of Twente, we’ve developed a very good alternative: we now disinfect the seeds in advance, for example using a hot water treatment.”
Cross-pollination
Bejo’s organic activities benefit from the knowledge and experience the company has built up in regular cultivation. And conventional has a lot to learn from organic too, says Bart Kuin,