On Tuesday, May 18, we held a virtual meeting with Milton Vélez, producer and plant breeder from the Province of Córdoba, who has been working with us for a few years, always sharing his knowledge, questions and wishes for improvement. He produces under a conventional management model, and maintains and improves two lines of corn: one with red grain and one with multicolored grain.
The record of his practices is mainly associated with the photographs he takes during frequent visits to his crops. He emphasizes that “it is essential to walk and walk the crop, look plant by plant, and choose those that have the best behavior to conserve their seeds”, leaving aside all those that present characteristics that are far from optimal.
In this sense, he shared his ways and frequencies of observation for the selection. Close to harvest, select plants based on the orientation, the position in the plant and the number of rows of the spikes, the resistance of the cane to breaking, the height of the plant, among others. At times he has made negative selection earlier in the growing cycle by eliminating plants that he considered to have unfavorable characteristics.
These exchanges are very valuable for our team, since knowledge and practices are shared about maize improvement, including selection criteria and methods, observations made in the field and how to record them. In this way we think together through which functionalities to continue improving and developing the Bioleft platform to favor the process of participatory improvement and collaboration between producers.