Plant breeding in the EU, new research highlights benefits for tomato and alfalfa

An addendum to prior research on the socio-economic and environmental values of plant breeding has just been published for tomato and alfalfa. In their analysis of various impacts of plant breeding in the EU since 2000, Noleppa and Cartsburg (HFFA Research GmbH 2021) have most recently concluded that genetic crop improvements of the past 20 years have contributed to various socio-economic and environmental benefits. It particularly turned out that plant breeding-induced innovations count a lot: on average and across all major arable crops cultivated in the EU, plant breeding contributes approximately 2/3 to innovation-induced yield growth. Although being already rather holistic, the analysis of Noleppa and Cartsburg (2021) was limited in the sense that it focused on 10 (groups of) arable crops cultivated in the EU only. Specialty crops were not subject of the research, and the feeding crop sector was also covered to a partial extent only. The newly released supplementary study ...