In light of climate change, population growth and changing dietary habits, the development and improvement of agricultural production systems through technological innovations, among others, is vital. Conventional as well as new breeding methods provide such innovations. For decades, modern plant breeding has made large contributions towards resilient production systems by producing yield-enhancing, resource efficient and healthy varieties.

As part of the research consortium Breeding Innovations in Wheat for Resilient Cropping Systems (BRIWECS) we analyze the economic and environmental impacts of the so-called breeder’s exemption, which is an integral part of the German plant variety protection legislation. It ensures that breeders can freely use other breeders’ licensed varieties for their own breeding activities and aims to foster a faster transfer of genetic improvements and, thus, speed up the development of improved varieties.

Our analysis of a comprehensive pedigree shows that most winter wheat varieties were created by making use of the breeder’s exemption, of which the majority were bred with one external parent variety. Hence, we divided almost 200 varieties into one treatment group (varieties bred by using the breeder’s exemption for both parents, i.e. both parents are from an external breeding institution) and one control group (varieties for which only one parent stems from another breeder) to conduct an impact assessment of the breeder’s exemption. Therefore, we merged the pedigree with field trial data (comprised of agronomic traits such as yield, plant health and nitrogen use efficiency) to detect and analyze differences between both groups. It turns out that using the breeder’s exemption offers some remarkable agronomic benefits which result in higher market revenue, lower production costs and increased natural resource efficiency. In particular, our results suggest that on average the treatment group had higher yields (+0.33%), improved plant health (+0.45% to +1.62% depending on the specific disease) and higher nitrogen efficiency (+0.24%). Per annum, the economic benefits at farm level amount to around EUR 15 to 20 million in Germany. Further positive economic impacts induced by breeding may also be expected on the sectoral level as well as for the economy at large when scaling up these results. Also, environmental indicators, such as land and water use, are positively influenced by the enhancement of improved varieties’ productivity and resource efficiency caused by the breeder’s exemption. Thus, our research provides novel insights regarding the value of winter wheat breeding in Germany for farmers and society at large.