Last week (13-17 July) 30 early-career breeders, researchers, students, advisors and farmers gathered at the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) for the LiveSeeding Summer School – a 5-day training event designed to foster a new generation of professionals equipped to handle the complexities of organic seed systems.
Participants spent five days designing real breeding plans, performing plant crosses, and building business models for organic seed companies. Tutors included ORC’s Julia Cooper.
The programme integrated agroecological principles with scientific concepts, emphasising their direct application in organic breeding. Through a blend of keynote lectures from leading experts, hands-on practical activities, on-farm demos, and collaborative group work, participants explored the entire lifecycle of organic cultivar development and seed marketing.
There was a visit to the genebank of hosts Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) with practical experiences and tips from the UPV team on plant genetic resources accession management.
Julia ran a ‘Workshop on reflecting on research stances to support sustainability transitions’ and led a group using the lessons from the Liveseed and LiveSeeding projects to learn about design of on-farm cultivar evaluation trials.
Julia Cooper was guide and mentor for her group on their assignment to design on-farm cultivar evaluation trials for four different hypothetical scenarios using the decision trees in the Liveseed booklet Selecting the appropriate methodology for organic on-farm cultivar trials. Julia said: “This type of problem solving approach is a great way for them to internalise their learnings from the week. They’re also challenged to dig deeper into the topic and broaden their learning through self-directed research.”
For more information see: Training materials on organic cultivar testing, OV and OHM
The LiveSeeding project offers a set of 5 Training Packages, organised in 25 Modules. https://liveseeding.eu/trainings-summer-school/
