Tomato breeding innovations
WorldVeg Tomato Breeder, Dr Assaf Eybishitz
Tomatoes are the single most consumed vegetable, with an estimated 190 million tonnes produced each year, and are a nutritious and important part of diets all over the world. But the global tomato industry is facing growing challenges due to climate change, increased pest and disease pressure, and the urgent need to sustainably produce more food for a growing population. These pressures are reshaping the landscape of tomato production, that requires more resilient, efficient, and highperforming varieties.
In response, the WorldVeg tomato breeding team led by Dr. Assaf Eybishitz continues to advance its capabilities to meet current and future needs through improved breeding strategies and innovative solutions, with a forward-thinking approach and supporting partners. WorldVeg has long been recognized for its contributions to genetic improvement thanks in part to its rich repository of diverse tomato germplasm.
But in today’s competitive and fast-paced environment, access to genetic material is no longer enough. Plant breeders are looking for complete solutions—elite genetics, hybrid performance, and strategic insight into how best to utilize them for the benefits of farmers and consumers. Hybrid varieties have also become increasingly important in the vegetable seed sector, offering producers higher yields, more adaptability, and improved resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses.
In Asia, WorldVeg launched a special hybrid project in 2024 through its breeding consortium with the Asia Pacific Seed Association (APSA), providing companies with parental lines developed from elite WorldVeg lines and supporting data to produce F1 hybrids. These were designed to reflect key market traits—including heat tolerance, resistance to diseases such as late blight, bacterial wilt and viruses, and fruit characteristics for different market preferences. This gave APSA members critical advantages for selecting parent combinations, developing new hybrids, and expanding their genetic base with confidence. A key element of this is understanding the contribution of each parental line to hybrid performance—referred to as hybrid vigor, or the heterosis effect. Identifying lines with high combining ability is essential for constructing superior hybrids without introducing incompatibilities or limiting performance.
Tomato flowers
Alongside hybrid development, WorldVeg has achieved significant progress in insect resistance breeding using resistance found in wild relatives such as Solanum galapagense. Advanced lines were developed with proven resistance to two very damaging pests, whitefly (Bemisia tabaci) and South American leaf miner Phthorimaea [Tuta] absoluta. Also, earlier inheritance studies found that insect resistance traits are expressed in a dominant or co-dominant manner—an important breakthrough that paves the way for future hybrid development. These findings enable the integration of insect resistance traits into elite hybrid combinations, significantly reducing the need for insecticides, lowering input costs and harm to farmer and environmental health. Also, small fruit size had previously posed a bottleneck in insect resistance breeding, so hybridization was used to introduce heterosis, enhancing vigor and fruit development in new combinations. But now, it is possible to develop dual-purpose hybrids that combine insect resistance with virus resistance, while having commercial fruit size and quality product profiles, and, leading to a stronger genetic foundation for sustainable, highperformance hybrids that meet expectations of farmers and markets.
Building on this progress, a new initiative—supported by the WorldVeg African Vegetable Breeding Consortium (AVBC) in collaboration with colleagues from the WorldVeg regional office in Benin, aims to strengthen bacterial wilt resistance.
A joyful tomato harvest!
A series of trials will now assess tomato lines carrying various marker combinations essential for achieving bacterial wilt resistance. Integrating findings into the breeding pipeline will accelerate the development of more locally adapted, high-performing tomato varieties. And early results indicate certain gene combinations exhibit superior performance, with plans to extend evaluations across Africa.
Looking ahead, these integrated research efforts form part of a broader vision at WorldVeg: to evolve from a pre-breeding hub into a comprehensive breeding partner. By aligning elite public-sector genetics with private-sector demands, and through strategic initiatives with APSA and beyond, WorldVeg is advancing breeding capacity, expanding genetic diversity, and delivering real solutions to global agricultural challenges.
These projects constitute valuable breakthroughs for new climate smart varieties, from interactive and innovative cooperation, based on exchange of knowledge, joint development, and the creation of advanced solutions for the benefit of all partners.
A joyful tomato harvest!
These Asian and African platforms for innovation, resilience and partnership reflect a shared commitment to sustainability, food security and empowerment. And moving forward, WorldVeg and these collaborative projects will play an increasingly vital role in shaping the future of tomato breeding in Asia, Africa, and Latin America for increased production, reduced chemical use, and more resilience and income for smallholder farmers across the world.
