permaculture

254 Facilitator’s Handbook for Permaculture Workshops

Presentation : Seed selection for IPM

Method : Facilitator presentation

Tools : Images, black/white board, markers

References : PC Book MOD 9 – Integrated Pest Management

PC Book MOD 5 – Seed Saving and Nurseries

IDEP GMO Fact Sheets

Objective : Participants learn about types of seeds and their connection to IPM

Saving local, non-hybrid seeds

• Saving, using, and improving good quality local seed is very important for IPM.
  It will increase the natural pest and disease resistance of the plants.


• By saving some seed from the BEST plants of each crop the plants will become
  more used to the local climate, soils, and conditions.

Observe the plants that are most disease and pest resistant

• Observe which crop is the best (most disease and pest resistant) and choose the
  seeds from those plants.


• Find out why the crop did so well (good soil, pest predators, use of compost,
  amount of water and sunlight, etc).


• Breed better crops each year by collecting the best seed - They will grow better
  and be more resistant to pests and diseases.

About hybrid seeds

• Hybrid seeds are often less resistant the local pests than locally grown non-
  hybrid varieties.


• Hybrid seeds are made by forced crossed pollination of 2 or more species of
  plants. The result is that hybrid plants might not produce seeds for the next
  crop. The quality of the next crop is often lower.


• Non-hybrid seeds can be saved and replanted year after year, hybrid seeds must
  be bought every year.


• Hybrid (or factory produced) varieties of seed often need to be grown using a
  range of chemical pesticides and fertilizers. This gives the companies that sell
  the seeds and chemicals increased profits, but it costs farmers more money.

Do not use Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) seeds

• GMO seeds are made by combining the genes of different species. These are
  factory produced seeds.


• It is very important that farmers do not grow genetic modified plants, as these
  questionable GMO plants can cross breed with other plants in the area where
  they are grown and this will pollute the local varieties of seeds for future
  generations of plants.

For more details about GMO, see IDEP’s fact sheets about GMO seeds.

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