Introduction to the Colloquium

Current global agriculture has promoted the most intensive agricultural production systems, which has led to the loss of biodiversity by limiting the number of crops and restricting the range of food and nutritional constituents of foods available to the community.  The introduction of alternative specialty crops to agricultural production systems provides comparative advantages including promotion of biodiversity, improvement of regional food diversity and human health, and sustainable utilization of plant genetic resources. It can also benefit farmers by providing new marketing opportunities through multiple-facets: diversifying crop production systems with value-added crops, increasing yields with less water and fertilizer inputs, improving resilience to climate variability, boosting crop resistance to pests and diseases, and therefore ultimately increasing farm incomes. Alternative specialty crops can help farmers to gain access to regional, domestic and global markets with new products. There is an urgent need to identify alternative crops and varieties that can be profitably grown in the region.

Meanwhile, there are challenges associated with the introduction of new crops: lack of information on alternative crop varieties, cultural practices, marketing and invasive potential. Farmers may face risk from poor economic returns if proper management and marketing information is not provided. When introducing new crops, invasiveness assessment and control methods also should be taken into account. Particularly, alternative fruit crops have been introduced many decades ago and grown in many regions throughout U.S. They are gaining attention in recent years due to their inherited advantages such as adaptation under a multitude of environments, higher nutritional value and improved fruit qualities.

In this colloquium, we will bring together researchers and specialists to address the importance of alternative specialty crops, introduce various types of alternative specialty crops and their consumption as fresh and/or processed fruits, share their cultural practices and marketing strategies, and discuss how to mitigate potential problems associated with the introduction of alternative specialty crops. The proposed colloquium will have two general objectives: 1) Introduction to alternative specialty crops and 2) Potentials and challenges.