Participatory potato breeding model involving organic farmers and commercial breeding companies in the Netherlands

Organic farmers urgently need cultivars resistant to Phytophthora infestans. Such cultivars also need to be adapted to other traits important for organic farming systems. One goal in the first five years of this ten-year, public-private partnership was to establish a program within the Dutch potato breeding system that includes farmer breeders working in close collaboration with six commercial breeding companies and two research institutes. To meet the goals we have involved 14 organic farmer breeders through setting up a yearly breeding course. A pre-breeding program is now running to introgress late blight resistance from wild relatives into cultivated material, and to make crossings with advances genitors to distribute seeds to farmer and commercial breeders for selection. In this paper a short overview is given of the results of 2009-2013.