A living lab to increase einkorn diversity from field to plate

International audience

anglais. The European project Divinfood (Divinfood website) with their nine Living Labs (LLab) aims at facilitating and valuing a broader use of Neglected and Underutilized Crops (NUCs). The Occitanie LLab (France) is focusing on the NUC einkorn (Triticum monococcum L. ssp. monococcocum) which is listed in the INFOODS-FAO catalogue of species contributing to nutritional indicators for biodiversity. With climate change, there are increasing challenges in finding cereal species adapted to ungrateful/dry farming environment and agro-ecological practices. Also, consumer’s expectations tend to favor healthy diversified cereals. Einkorn appears as a promising crop, but there is only one commercial variety available “Petit Epeautre de Haute Provence” that is not well performing in Occitanie context. To increase agrobiodiversity and to find adapted varieties to local conditions and on-farm processing, a participatory evaluation involving farmers was conducted to select the varieties they consider more interesting among 100 genetic resources (INRAE, CRB, Clermont-Ferrand). 19 cultivars were selected and cultivated in 5 locations (research stations and farms) to evaluate their agronomic performances (lodging and pests’ resistance, covering power compared to weeds, dehulling facility, Thousand Kernel Weight (TKW), yield). They were dehulled, processed into flour using a stone mill, then into pasta. The quality of flour (protein content and profile, mineral content, particle size) and pasta (color, protein content and profile, water absorption, cooking loss, texture) were assessed and compared with commercial artisanal ones. The main criteria retained by the farmers were: precocity, lodging resistance, color of the ears, height, vigor. The agronomic evaluation led to retain only 6 einkorn cultivars (cv. Antenato for its high TKW, genetic resources 55, 47, 67, 56 for their high agronomic performances, and cv. “Petit Epeautre de Haute Provence” as a control). Despite some differences in quantity and protein composition between the 6 varieties, the corresponding pasta did not appear to differ greatly from each other in terms of sensory and cooking quality. These first results suggestthat the 6 varieties meet not only the needs of farmers but also those of processors and consumers. They can be used by farmers and pasta producers to diversify their production, to increase the agrobiodiversity from farm to fork and for better agronomic performances.