Two studies by the World Vegetable Center examine the production factors, laws, regulations, and policies that affect the vegetable seed sector in Africa.

A source of micronutrients to combat malnutrition, a means to create employment and generate income, a path to food and nutrition security—vegetable crops can fulfill all these roles in Africa, provided a small but essential input is available: seed.

Throughout sub-Saharan Africa, the seed sector primarily has focused on staple crops. However, to support dynamic, diverse growth in fresh produce markets—growth that will expand economies and nourish millions—vegetable seed must receive greater attention, from policies to guide variety releases to best practices for seed production and distribution.

To emphasize the importance of developing a seed system better suited to Africa’s vegetable sector, the World Vegetable Center (WorldVeg) prepared two in-depth studies, one examining the continent’s seed industry at large and the other investigating the sector in a specific country, Mali.

A continental challenge

WorldVeg researchers Pepijn Schreinemachers, Peter Hanson and Jody Harris collaborated with Katrin Kuhlmann, Tara Francis, and Indulekha Thomas from the New Markets Lab, a nonprofit law and development center, on Seed Laws and Regulations Affecting the Development of the Private Vegetable Seed Sector in Sub-Saharan Africa, a 55-page report exploring the legal, regulatory and policy frameworks that impact the seed sector and affect opportunities for all stakeholders, including smallholder farmers.

The authors reviewed legal and regulatory issues along the seed value chain, starting with variety research and development and moving through plant breeder’s rights, variety release and registration, seed certification, local seed sales, and cross-border seed trade.

Current procedures for registration of crop varieties and seed certification are ill-suited to the extensive diversity of vegetables, both in the large number of crop varieties as well as the immense range of traits for yield, color, shape, taste, pest and disease resistance, heat and drought tolerance, and other consumer-preferred characteristics.

Many countries rely on imports of vegetable seed to meet the demand for improved varieties. Aligning regional seed trade rules may promote wider availability of more varieties and also facilitate domestic vegetable seed production, release, and trade on the continent.

An additional challenge arises from counterfeit or adulterated vegetable seed. Unsuspecting farmers planting such seed experience low germination rates, poor quality crops, and diminished yields. Measures to curb the spread of fake seed are beginning to be adopted, such as innovative scratch-off labels used in Kenya to verify the authenticity of purchased seed.

Support for the report was provided by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) of the UK government and the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Small Scale Irrigation through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

The situation in Mali

WorldVeg authors Siaka Dembélé, Jean Baptiste Tignegre, and Ba German Diarra prepared Development of the Vegetable Seed Sector in Mali and Opportunities for Irrigated Seed Production with the support of the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Small Scale Irrigation through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). This study focused on the country’s formal vegetable seed sector—seed companies, seed cooperatives, and agrodealers—and also reviewed the status of the informal and semi-formal sectors. Data were collected through a literature review and more than 70 interviews with government officers, seed companies, seed cooperatives, individual seed producers, agrodealers, and seed distributors.

Several factors constrain domestic production of vegetable seed in Mali, including low technical capacity of staff, limited access to finance, lack of seed processing and packing equipment, and lack of irrigation technologies that often confine seed production to the wet season.

Although organizing individual seed producers into cooperatives and associations has brought some progress, current seed laws place locally produced seed at a distinct disadvantage compared with imported seed. Locally produced varieties are subject to multilocation and multi-season trials for Value for Cultivation and Use (VCU) and Distinctness, Uniformity and Stability (DUS) and must be registered in a national catalogue of plant varieties before they can be released. This mandatory seed certification process usually requires 4-5 field visits by government inspectors.

In contrast, imported seed requires only a phytosanitary certificate and germination testing; no trials or variety registration are necessary. Many seed imports escape phytosanitary and custom inspection.

Mali’s seed laws and regulations need to be revisited to take the specific nature of vegetable seed into account, the authors say. Requirements related to variety registration, seed certification, and basic seed production may need to be eased for vegetables to make local seed production more competitive. The technical capacity of local seed producers requires strengthening and they need access to seed processing and packaging equipment, storage, improved irrigation equipment, and finance. Finally, there is a need to invest in local vegetable breeding research to increase farmers’ choice of locally adapted varieties.

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These articles and many more are available in HARVEST, the WorldVeg open access data and document archive.