Join OSA for Organic Association of Kentucky’s Annual Conference themed Rooted in Resilience: Growing Healthy Soils and Opportunities for Kentucky Organics January 26 – 28, 2023 in Frankfort, Kentucky. The gathering brings together hundreds of Kentuckians and neighbors active in community food systems: farmers, researchers, nonprofit professionals, federal and state agency partners, allied service providers, and conscious consumers working collectively to build a local, resilient, and healthy food system.
We hope you’ll join us at this seed-focused workshop during the conference!
On-Farm Vegetable Breeding: Developing Varieties Uniquely Adapted to the Southeast
January 28th at 4:30 – 5:30p ET
Speakers: Megan Allen, Care of the Earth Community Farm; Jared Zystro, Organic Seed Alliance
As was established in Organic Seed Alliance’s 2012 Seed Survey of the Southeast, there is an “urgent or very important” need for vegetable seed varieties that can resist the pest, disease, and weed pressures as well as the heat and humidity unique to the Southeast. This need has only grown over the last 10 years with climate change. Megan Allen will give a brief overview of the decline of public vegetable breeding and the subsequent lack of vegetable varieties suited to organic production in the Southeast before discussing in detail three of her breeding projects: butternut squash, muskmelon, and kale (species napus). Megan will also give brief updates on other on-farm breeding projects around the Southeast. There will be time for Q&A and discussion at the end.
