Vegetable breeding – fascinatingly diverse

Around 150 colleagues already work for the BU Vegetables, 120 of them at the Dutch company and spinach world market leader Pop Vriend, where other crops such as beans and swiss chard are also bred. The acquisition of Pop Vriend marked the start of our vegetable business in 2019, and in March 2021 we added the Italian company Geneplanta, which focuses on tomato breeding.

Developing our own breeding programs is enormously important for the BU. The team led by Coert Engels, Global Head of Breeding Vegetables, which has already grown to approximately 25 employees, is starting breeding activities worldwide for the "Big Five": tomatoes, peppers, melons, watermelons and cucumbers. Breeding stations are being set up in Mexico (Culiacán), Brazil (Uberlândia), southeastern Spain (Almería and Murcia), Turkey (Antalya), India and China. More colleagues will be hired and additional locations could be added.

"One of the biggest challenges in vegetable breeding is the enormous segmentation in the markets," says Coert Engels. "Vegetable varieties have to serve the needs of growers, vendors and customers alike. Vegetables are grown in different climates and then in different growing systems: outdoors, under plastic film or under glass. There is an incredible diversity of varieties in terms of colors, shapes and sizes. And, of course, tastes are different."

Very important is disease resistance breeding. There is increasing pressure from consumers that no chemical pesticides be used in cultivation. In the process, breeders have to keep breeding for resistance to new diseases and pests but also to new strains and races of existing diseases and pests.

"The lifecycle of vegetable varieties is generally shorter than that of agricultural crops, but breeding is faster because several generation cycles per year are possible, depending on the vegetable species. We work closely with the researchers in Einbeck on this, particularly in the development of doubled haploids and use of marker technology. Last year, we started with the first breeding activities. Next year we will have the results of the first crosses in tomatoes, melons and watermelons. That will be followed by one to two years of further trials in the markets, and then we want to sell the first of our own KWS varieties," says Coert Engels.

Breeding new spinach varieties takes three to four years on average, as we can only do one cycle from seed to seed per year. However, it can be done even faster: we breed about five percent of our spinach on a fast track and can develop new hybrids in one to two years.

Another challenge: Baby leaf spinach has a short lifecycle; sowing to harvest is sometimes just 25 days. This means that producers grow spinach in their fields more than once a year and some even year around. However, each time of the year the growing conditions are different, which places different demands on the varieties. We therefore need to breed different varieties for the different growing seasons. This is true for the bunching and processing markets as well. Therefore, our portfolio is growing fast: we introduce fifteen new varieties each year.

Melons often taste sweet like fruit, but they are actually a vegetable. Biologically, they belong to the cucurbitaceae family and bear a strong resemblance to cucumbers. In countries such as Spain, France, Italy and Morocco, or in Asia, original melon varieties are still common. The cultivation of sweet and non-sweet varieties is practiced throughout the world, but commercial breeding is more the focus in the creation of new sweet varieties.

Melons have the greatest diversity of any vegetable in the world. Each producer market has its own varieties – whether in the Mediterranean region, Turkey, North Africa, the Middle East or Asia. From there, melons are exported to those markets where they are not a traditionally grown fruit. They are very healthy because we eat them raw and thus no nutrients are lost by heating.

We have to combine these breeding objectives to reflect current trends. Galia melons, for example, have become increasingly long-lived and easier to transport over the past twenty years. However, this has been at the expense of flavor. We are now looking for a balance between long shelf life and flavor. A second trend: In markets where cultivated melons have been around for decades, varieties that catch the eye in the supermarket are in demand. White melons with green stripes, personal size fruits or sweet-sour tastes are a few examples.

Not all tomatoes are the same. My focus is on elongated varieties in five sizes, and each has its own characteristics. A colleague takes care of round varieties from cherry to beef tomatoes. This diversity is what makes tomatoes such an exciting crop for me. What's more, the market is open to completely new varieties in terms of color, shape and taste. The current trend is toward tasty tomatoes.

Geographically, our focus is currently on Mexico as the largest market for fresh tomatoes and Italy, also well known for the quality of its tomatoes. We are three breeders who work in two breeding stations in Italy.

Breeding resistance is one of our main goals. Other important characteristics are high yield, shelf life and taste. Combining all of these is difficult, because shelf life and taste go in exactly opposite directions in breeding.

But we must not neglect taste under any circumstances – otherwise what we have observed in recent years with the cherry tomato in Italy will happen. Demand and the reputation of Italian tomatoes as a whole have fallen in Europe because the tomatoes now last longer but don't taste as good. So we need to bring back flavor while preserving shelf life. In Sicily, our Midi-plum variety LIPARI F1, weighing forty grams, is popular with growers right now because it ideally combines shelf life, flavor, color and firmness.

We spent ten years building up the breeding material and now use it for KWS. We also have access to several gene banks in the U.S. and Europe – including wild varieties that are important for new resistance traits and for flavor.