The need for conventional breeding for regional and smallholder resilient seed systems

Conventional population-based breeding approaches have become increasingly marginalised despite their historical and practical significance. Modern corporate plant breeding has largely emphasized yield gains and uniformity. While successful under high-input systems, corporate plant breeding created vulnerabilities such as fragile seed supply chains, and limited environmental resilience. This Opinion briefly revisits population cultivars methods as instruments for diversity enhancement, local adaptation, and evolutionary responsiveness, by enabling crop cultivars to evolve in situ, and enabling smallholder and local seed networks, where large commercial enterprises are absent or unprofitable. Conventional population-based breeding approaches can (1) value diversity and resilience over short-term maximisation; (2) bring free or minimally charged seed to farmers; and (3) more importantly, farmers can keep seed from one season to the next, while ensuring yield stability. Local seed systems, due to their structural advantages in flexibility and responsiveness resulting from their close connection with farming communities and shorter decision-making pathways, can adapt these breeding tactics more rapidly to emerging challenges, such as climate shocks or sudden changes in farmers demands, create robust local seed systems for marginal growing areas, and mitigate systemic risks under accelerating global change.