OSU Research Helps Fill Information Gaps For Organic Seed Growers

Seed growers, researchers and agricultural professionals gathered beside research plots at Oregon State University’s North Willamette Research and Extension Center, then moved among flowering lettuce, squash and rows of brassicas to see research aimed at answering basic questions for organic seed producers.

The Aug. 19 OSPREY Seed Summit and Field Tour, presented by Oregon State University and the Organic Seed Alliance, offered an up-close look at work underway through OSPREY, short for Organic Seed Production Research on Economics and Yield. The national project is addressing a shortage of research-based information about how management practices affect organic vegetable seed production.

Organic Seed Alliance leads the four-year, $3.4M project, funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture through the Organic Research and Extension Initiative. OSU Extension researchers Kristie Buckland and Cynthia Ocamb are among the project investigators.

Research partners are conducting trials across the country while participating growers contribute information from their own farms. The project is examining four core crops — broccoli, lettuce, squash and tomato — and eventually will combine research results and grower-contributed information in a freely available seed-yield database and economic decision-making tools.

On a warm, sunny day, attendees gathered around speakers, walked through research plots and watched demonstrations. The program covered vegetable seed yield, soil moisture sensing and specialty crop breeding before moving indoors for further discussion about irrigation decisions.

For Buckland, an associate professor and OSU Extension vegetable and specialty seed crop specialist in the College of Agricultural Sciences, the research begins with an information gap that is easy to describe.

“A lot of people are operating in this ‘no data zone’ because it just doesn’t exist yet,” Buckland said.

Filling gaps in seed-yield research
Buckland stood beside research plots where OSU researchers are studying how irrigation affects seed yield.

Around her were rows of lettuce that had grown well past the leafy stage familiar to consumers, their tall stems covered with flowers and developing seed. Signs marked plots receiving different amounts of irrigation.

Farmers have access to irrigation recommendations for growing vegetables to the point when they are harvested for food. But seed producers must keep those plants growing through flowering and seed development, and Buckland said research-based irrigation guidance for those later stages can be difficult or impossible to find.

“I don’t care if I can eat the broccoli,” she told the field-day group, speaking from a seed grower’s perspective. “I want to know what the seed looks like at the end.”

This year, OSU researchers are comparing different levels of irrigation and following plants as they flower and produce seed. A parallel trial is underway in California. Researchers ultimately want to know how irrigation decisions affect the amount of usable seed growers harvest.

Next year, OSPREY trials will examine another common production decision: how closely plants should be spaced and how that spacing affects seed yield.

The research station trials are only one source of information. Growers across the country are producing some of the same varieties and contributing their own production and yield data. That information is feeding into a larger database intended to give seed producers a better idea of what yields they might expect under different growing conditions.

The approach combines formal research with information from working farms because relatively little research about organic seed yield is readily available to growers.

Researchers are also learning how to improve the trials themselves. Different varieties can develop at dramatically different rates, and Buckland said the team is identifying changes that could strengthen future experiments.

“That’s part of research, and that’s part of what we’re doing with this project,” she said. “We’ll get some data. It will make the next one better.”

Making irrigation information easier to use
Another field-day stop showed how OSU researchers are approaching irrigation from a different direction: helping farmers more easily determine when their crops need water.

Berit Dinsdale, an OSU Extension faculty research assistant, explained a lower-cost soil moisture sensing station that a research team has been developing and testing. The work grew out of Dinsdale’s statewide needs assessment in which farmers expressed interest in using soil moisture information to reduce irrigation labor and costs but raised concerns about the expense of available systems and uncertainty about how to integrate the data into farm management decisions.

The OSU team is evaluating lower-cost soil moisture monitoring approaches and developing practical guidance to help growers interpret sensor readings and decide when to irrigate. Some stations can transmit field measurements to an online platform for viewing on a computer or phone, while simpler systems can be read directly in the field.

María Zamora Re, Oregon State assistant professor and OSU Extension irrigation specialist, said producers face numerous commercially available soil moisture sensors but may have difficulty knowing which ones are reliable and how to turn the information they collect into irrigation decisions.

The work is part of Zamora Re’s statewide irrigation research and OSU Extension program, which evaluates soil moisture monitoring approaches across crops, soils and production regions in Oregon and translates findings into practical irrigation guidance.

After hearing from the researchers, attendees stepped into the research plots for a demonstration. Zamora Re showed the monitoring equipment beside the crops, then used a handheld reader connected to sensors in the soil to demonstrate how growers could check moisture conditions and decide when to irrigate.

Nearby, delicata squash filled rows where researchers are testing different irrigation levels. The work is examining how soil moisture thresholds vary by crop, soil and stage of plant development, with the goal of helping growers use water, labor and energy more efficiently.

Heidi Noordijk, OSU Extension Metro Small Farms coordinator, said NWREC gives the team a place to troubleshoot the system before it reaches farms.

“We’ve been trialing these stations for three years and we do all the troubleshooting here before it gets onto growers’ fields,” Noordijk said, “so the growers don’t have to figure out the deal with as all the issues we had.”

Researchers also want to better understand how irrigation needs change depending on the crop, soil and stage of plant development so farmers can use the information to make practical decisions.

Breeding crops for farms and markets
Standing among rows of brassicas, Lane Selman shifted the discussion from how crops are managed to the crops themselves.

Selman, an assistant professor of practice in OSU’s Department of Horticulture and founder of the Culinary Breeding Network, described specialty crop breeding work involving vegetables that researchers hope can offer advantages to both farmers and consumers.

Among them are new brassicas, including crosses that combine characteristics from kale, collards and sprouting broccoli. One breeding effort is aimed at a dual-purpose plant that could produce both tender leaves and broccoli-like shoots.

Other project crops have included cucumber melons — types of melons that are eaten like cucumbers — as well as bitter gourds and peppers.

Selman said the breeders are looking for traits that can make crops work better for farmers, including organic producers, while also considering flavor, appearance, nutrition and other qualities that could attract consumers.

That creates another challenge. A new vegetable may perform well in the field, but consumers must recognize it and want to buy it.

Selman said unfamiliar crops might first gain attention at farmers markets, where growers can introduce them directly to customers. Chefs can also play a role by experimenting with vegetables and showing people ways to prepare them.

“The breeders and all of us in this project are trying to find things that work better for farmers and taste great,” Selman said, while also finding ways to bring the crops into the marketplace.

Farmers are part of that work as well. Some are growing the same experimental crops on their own farms, giving researchers another opportunity to see how varieties perform outside university research plots.

The specialty crop work will return to Oregon for a larger field day and variety showcase in 2028.

Putting information in growers’ hands
Reliable information on organic vegetable seed yields and production costs remains limited. OSPREY is designed to combine university research, trials on working farms and growers’ historical information to create tools that can help producers estimate yields, understand costs and make better-informed production decisions.

Buckland said the partnership with Organic Seed Alliance and Extension programs around the country is designed to make what they learn accessible to the people who can use it.

“We’re hoping through the different areas of the project that we create this massive database full of data that is really easily accessible to growers,” Buckland said. “We’re getting information straight to growers.”