Medicinal plants – biodynamic seed line maintenance and breeding

|   Heilpflanzen, Präparateforschung

Ruth Richter

Here we are referring to a knowledge transfer interface at which the scientific attitude to knowledge actually contributes towards shaping our environment and living conditions. Therefore it is very important that the picture of the plant developed in Goethean and anthroposophically extended science also flows into breeding practice. Decades long work on grain and vegetable seeds has already led to welcome results in the form of marketing permits for varieties bred biodynamically.

However, at the moment there is only limited availability of seeds from biodynamic medicinal plants that have been cultivated over the long term. At the same time, in recent years the quality requirements for plant raw materials by the pharmaceutical companies who process them have greatly increased. The species and variety purity and exact traceability of seed origin have to be recorded. This even applies if, in the traditional way, plants are taken into cultivation after being collected in the wild.

Even with medicinal plants, conventional breeders are increasingly propagating hybrids and varieties that have been bred solely for their content of a particular active ingredient. This is not only undesirable in organic cultivation but also could risk displacing the traditional conventionally bred seed.

In a project initiated by the association Hortus Officinarum, we are carrying out the maintenance, selection and documentation of seed from selected medicinal plants raised in biodynamic cultivation.

The project is supported by Hortus Officinarum and the Swiss Kommission zur Erhaltung von Kulturpflanzen (SKEK, Commision for the Conservation of Cultivated Plants).

Co-workers: 
Ruth Richter and Andreas Ellenberger   

More Information on the Website of Hortus officinarum association