Plant breeding for organic and sustainable, low-input agriculture

Evaluation of 36 lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.) genotypes under conventional and organic
environment
Dimitrios Vlachostergios 1 , Dimitrios Baxevanos 2 , Demetrios Roupakias 3 .
1 Fodder Crops and Pasture Institute, Larissa Greece.
2 Lab. of Biometry, Sch. of Agricultural Sciences, University of Thessaly, Volos Greece
3 Lab. of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
Lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.) is an important crop throughout the Meditterrenean region, W.
Asia, and N. America (Erskine W., 1996). It is also broadely used in organic agriculture as it
improves soil fertility. The main objectives in the current study were: (1) to investigate the
productivity of lentil genotypes under organic and conventional management and (2) to detect
the promising genetic material for an organic plant breeding program.
Thirty six lentil varieties were evaluated under organic and conventional environments under
field experiments that were established for two consecutive years at the Fodder Crops and
Pastures Institute in Larissa, Greece. The genetic material studied originated from Greece,
ICARDA, Morocco, India, Turkey, Jordan, Chile, Canada, USA, Algeria and Bulgaria. In the
conventional trial plots standard cultural practices (P mineral fertilization & pest control) were
applied throughout the growing season, while in the organic ones no fertilizers or pest
agrochemicals were applied. The experimental field arrangement was the triple lattice with three
replications. ANOVA and GGE Biplot analysis were applied for identifying significant
differences and repeatable GEI patterns in relation to genotype adaptability and stability.
ANOVA indicated statistically significant differences between genotypes and environments.
GxE interaction (GEI) was also significant. It was observed that under conventional management
most genotypes had a higher yield compared to the organic one. This is likely due to the effect of
fertilizers and pest control applied under conventional management. On the other hand, certain
genotypes adapted better under organic environment. The ranking of the mean yield per
genotype and environment revealed two types of GEI. Firstly, genotypes occupying the same
ranking position at both the organic and the conventional environment (non-crossover GEI), and
secondly, those that exhibited a significant alter in the ranking (crossover GEI) under the two
environments. Thus, among the 10% highest yielding genotypes under the conventional
environment there was also included half of the 10% highest yielding genotypes under the
organic environment. Moreover, these genotypes exhibited broad adaptability and stability. This
observation is in agreement with the statement: a lot of genetic material developed under
conventional management is also exploitable in organic agriculture (Vogt - Kaute W., 2001).
Finally, most of the low yielding genetic material was at the bottom of the rank under both the
conventional and organic environment.
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