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Paper long abstract

In apple production, the control of apple scab accounts for around 50% of the Treatment Frequency Index. The use of tolerant varieties is one of the few levers capable of significantly reducing pesticide inputs, both in organic and integrated fruit production systems. Yet their uptake remains limited.

This paper argues that this paradox does not stem from producers’ resistance to transition, but from the commercial and regulatory infrastructures that structure market outlets. Varietal choice is a powerful agronomic lever; however, its viability depends on markets able to absorb and stabilize these productions. Drawing on Infrastructure Studies, we analyse public procurement in collective catering as an infrastructure potentially capable of reconfiguring such outlets. We hypothesize, however, that it remains embedded in socio-material arrangements historically stabilized by the large-scale retail sector (Mazenc and Pahun, 2025): product standardization, centralized purchasing, logistical power, and calculative devices (Callon and Muniesa, 2003). These infrastructures shape upstream which varieties circulate and which remain marginalized. Under such conditions, is the formal capacity of public procurement to draft tender specifications sufficient to transform production practices?

Based on interviews with producers, nursery growers, intermediaries, and actors involved in public procurement, as well as an analysis of past contracts, the study examines the infrastructural, organizational, and institutional conditions that hinder – or enable – the integration of resistant varieties. It shows that varietal transition depends less on actors’ normative intentions than on the effective reconfiguration of existing productive and market infrastructures.