Seed companies use superior genetics from the World Vegetable Center to breed quality vegetable varieties for Asia’s small-scale producers.

Good breeding will always show, as a brief report recently released by the World Vegetable Center (WorldVeg) Enabling Impact team reveals.

The report, titled Use of World Vegetable Center breeding lines among seed companies in Asia in 2020 is based on data provided by 34 current or former seed companies that are members of the Asia and Pacific Seed Association (APSA)-WorldVeg Vegetable Breeding Consortium.

Of the 34 companies that provided data, 19 are presently selling 86 varieties of tomato, pepper, bitter gourd and pumpkin featuring genetic material developed by WorldVeg breeding programs.

“It’s an important milestone and strong evidence for the advantages of public-private partnerships,” said Dr. Pepijn Schreinemachers, WorldVeg Lead Scientist – Impact Evaluation, who co-authored the report with Mandy Lin, Manager – Private Sector Relations.

The report is particularly relevant as 2021 is the United Nation’s International Year of Fruits and Vegetables—a time to reflect, focus and act on the essential role of fruits and vegetables in human nutrition, food security and health—and also the year of the United Nations Food Systems Summit, dedicated to transforming food systems for affordable healthy diets and addressing key drivers of food insecurity and malnutrition.

Without quality seed, none of it is possible.

WorldVeg plant breeders strive to improve pest and disease resistance, drought tolerance, yield, size, shape, color and other desirable traits in vegetable crops. It’s a process that can take years of research and demands patient, long-term investment on the part of donors. Yet the job isn’t complete until a farmer can obtain seed of an improved variety and plant it to reap the benefits of that research.

Seed companies are primary partners to ensure advances in breeding make the leap from the lab to the farmer’s field. The APSA-WorldVeg Vegetable Breeding Consortium was established in 2016 and membership has steadily increased to 44 vegetable seed companies in 2020. The consortium helps to forge stronger links with these important collaborators. Consortia members and WorldVeg breeders meet to discuss common interests and share ideas and germplasm. Specific traits, breeding lines incorporating several traits, or hybrids resulting from WorldVeg research are then taken up by seed companies for their own breeding activities and eventual seed sales to vegetable producers.

The 19 seed companies that are presently selling WorldVeg-related varieties sold a total of 25 tons of seed of these varieties in 2020. “We estimate that WorldVeg-related varieties are used by at least 490,000 small-scale vegetable farmers in Asia,” said Schreinemachers. “These farmers jointly planted about 171,000 hectares with the improved varieties. This usage is substantially larger than what we estimated two years ago.”

The contribution of WorldVeg is largest for tomato, a crop that has been a priority for the institution’s breeding research since 1972. Data collected from the seed companies indicate about 14% of all tomato varieties sold contain WorldVeg germplasm.

The study also elucidated priorities for future vegetable breeding. Seed companies are particularly interested in tomato germplasm with heat tolerance and resistance to tomato yellow leaf curl virus, followed by high yield, bacterial wilt resistance, and late blight resistance.

Seed companies are also interested in pumpkins with begomovirus resistance, early maturity, and high yield. Preferred pepper traits include anthracnose resistance and high yield, followed by heat tolerance and bacterial wilt resistance. For bitter gourd, begomovirus resistance was the top-ranked trait.

In 2018, WorldVeg established a consortium with vegetable seed companies in Africa called the Africa Vegetable Breeding Consortium, which currently has 20 full and 15 associate members.