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Short abstract:

Plant breeding organizations can contribute to more sustainable and just agri-food systems. However, enabling this transformative potential has proven difficult. Drawing on practice-based organizational theories we study how breeding decisions are made in the face of structural and social factors.

Long abstract:

Plant breeding organisations are said to have significant transformative potential for agri-food systems. However, breeding organisations are conditioned by diverse socio-technical factors that enable and constrain this potential. STS has largely investigated structural issues such as ownership and shifting regimes (Parthasarathy, 2011; Legun, 2022). However, little research has considered breeding decisions from 'inside' the organisation (Glover, 2010; McGuire, 2008).

Building on the STS tradition of laboratory studies and theories on organizational learning (Orlikowski, 2002; Nicolini 2010), we studied how the transformative potential of plant breeding is enabled and constrained inside breeding organisations. We draw on two months of ethnographic fieldwork of an Irish potato breeding program where we engaged with breeders, field and lab technicians, and commercial staff.

For one, we found that decision-making operates in a space of fundamental uncertainty about how varieties will perform in distant growing conditions and value chains. Consequently the breeding program does not execute a clearly defined plan but rather continuously adapts as breeding lines are characterized and market contexts change.

Second, we found that even inside breeding programs there are contesting perspectives on what improvement is. Different types of improvements are valued by people with different types of expertise (such as crop breeders, field technicians, and marketeers) and by different organizational parts (such as R&D, marketing, etc.).

These features of organizational learning found inside breeding programs complement existing STS scholarship on ownership and shifting regimes, thus contributing to our understanding of under what conditions plant breeding organisations can contribute to transform agri-food systems.