Accelerating Success: New tomato project puts seed companies in pole position
Vibrant tomatoes ripening in the field
A new tomato project launched by the Asia and Pacific Seed Association (APSA) and the World Vegetable Center (WorldVeg) is giving seed companies a faster way to develop and release better tomato varieties – ones that grow well in hot weather, resist diseases, and produce high-quality fruit.
The project, Accelerating Success, is open to members of the 2025 APSA-WorldVeg Vegetable Breeding Consortium. Members already receive two-year exclusive access to WorldVeg breeding lines of tomato, pepper, tropical pumpkins, bitter gourd and others. These enable members to develop and test their own hybrids.
The new special project – which carries an additional fee – aims to speed up tomato breeding by giving participating companies early access to 21 new, ready-to-use tomato hybrids. These are F1 hybrid seeds that have already been selected for traits like high yield, fruit quality, heat tolerance, and disease resistance – ideal for immediate testing and potential commercialization.
Shot during the field trial at the 2025 APSA Annual Workshop
In addition, they’ll get access to the parent lines used to produce those hybrids, allowing them to develop their own varieties. For companies looking to explore new genetic combinations, the project also offers optional F2 seeds – produced from the next generation after the F1 hybrids. These F2 populations contain a wide mix of traits and can help breeders discover and develop new tomato lines suited to specific environments or market needs.
Under Accelerating Success, Consortium members can request:
- 100 seeds of each F1 hybrid tomato, already selected for strong yield, fruit quality, heat tolerance, and disease resistance.
- 100 seeds of the parent plants used to create each hybrid – valuable material for companies that want to develop their own improved varieties.
- 200 seeds from the next generation (F2), for companies that want more genetic diversity to work with.
This project is part of ongoing efforts by APSA and WorldVeg to help seed companies bring better-performing, more resilient vegetables to market – faster and more efficiently.
For more information on the costs of joining, please read the Accelerating Success project proposal. For registration, please visit the project event page.
