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Open Pollinated Broccoli
This Organic Seed Alliance PPB project was supported in 2007 by a generous grant from the Organic Farming Research Foundation. The project is still underway for the 2008 season.

OP Broccoli Background: Jim Myers, Oregon State University, and Julie Puhich of Common Ground Farm are working together to develop an open- pollinated broccoli broadly adapted to organic growing conditions in the Pacific Northwest with specific traits that fit the CSA/market grower niche for producers. The starting population for Myers' and Puhich’s project was a population Myers developed over the last six years by crossing a broad diversity of broccoli varieties and breeding populations and then selecting the population on approximately eight organic farms over six years.

Common Ground Farm's goal and breeding objective is to be able to harvest broccoli consistently from late May through the fall season. They sell primarily through a CSA, and as such uniformity of head appearance or harvest timing is not as crucial as it is for a contract producer. The early market (May harvest) is the most important window as there are very few available crops at that time. They stretch broccoli availability throughout the season by sowing about six varieties, four times per year. They currently use multiple F1s and would like to have an OP available for a number of reasons:  1) gain the ability to direct sow seed and minimize green house efforts (F1 seed is too expensive for direct sowing), 2) reduce overall seed cost by maintaining their own seed supply, and 3) to develop a variety well suited to their production needs and climatic constraints. Key traits that they are focusing selection on include:   earliness, medium head size (~5 in. dia.), high side-shoot production, good growth under cool spring soil conditions which tend to have low N availability in organic systems, convex dome, small bead size, blue green heads, medium plant height (~ 3 ft.), strong stems, and moderate head to leaf ratio. Common Ground Farm does not demand as uniform a maturity as most F1s, but a narrowness in timing of maturity is desirable so that a given sowing is not in the field over a very long time.