AEGILOPS-NETWORK FOR BIODIVERSITY AND ECOLOGY IN AGRICULTURE

AEGILOPS’ purpose is to conserve heritage varieties and traditional agricultural knowledge and to restore landrace varieties into contemporary agricultural practice in ways that benefit the traditional farmers. AEGILOPS works in close collaboration with Greek Gene Bank and Universities to evaluate and select landraces which can thrive in variable organic environments. Research in the field has already revealed that greek heritage wheat varieties showed good agronomic adaptation under organic farming. On-farm conservation and selection enables landraces to evolve and adjust to anticipated changes of climate, which is most important for food security of the region and globally. AEGILOPS has collected, trialed and selected various landrace cereals and vegetables to be given to organic farmers for cultivation. Farmers, consumers and the community participate every year in our events for demonstration and to taste the high quality of traditional foods prepared with landrace foodcrops. In 2012 AEGILOPS issued successfully the Greek Seed School.