A living lab to increase einkorn diversity from field to plate

International audience

Английский. The European project Divinfood (Divinfood website) with their nine Living Labs (LLab) aims atfacilitating and valuing a broader use of Neglected and Underutilized Crops (NUCs). TheOccitanie LLab (France) is focusing on the NUC einkorn (Triticum monococcum L. ssp.monococcocum) which is listed in the INFOODS-FAO catalogue of species contributing tonutritional indicators for biodiversity. With climate change, there are increasing challenges infinding cereal species adapted to ungrateful/dry farming environment and agro-ecologicalpractices. Also, consumer’s expectations tend to favor healthy diversified cereals. Einkornappears as a promising crop, but there is only one commercial variety available “Petit Epeautrede Haute Provence” that is not well performing in Occitanie context.To increase agrobiodiversity and to find adapted varieties to local conditions and on-farmprocessing, a participatory evaluation involving farmers was conducted to select the varietiesthey consider more interesting among 100 genetic resources (INRAE, CRB, Clermont-Ferrand).19 cultivars were selected and cultivated in 5 locations (research stations and farms) toevaluate their agronomic performances (lodging and pests’ resistance, covering powercompared to weeds, dehulling facility, Thousand Kernel Weight (TKW), yield). They weredehulled, processed into flour using a stone mill, then into pasta. The quality of flour (proteincontent and profile, mineral content, particle size) and pasta (color, protein content andprofile, water absorption, cooking loss, texture) were assessed and compared withcommercial 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 forits 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 andprotein composition between the 6 varieties, the corresponding pasta did not appear to differgreatly 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 andconsumers. They can be used by farmers and pasta producers to diversify their production, toincrease the agrobiodiversity from farm to fork and for better agronomic performances.