To help meet the world’s growing demand for food and nutrition and to improve the productivity of smallholder farmers, East-West Seed focuses on the variety development of tropical vegetables. Our aim is to produce new, improved varieties with better yield, ability to thrive in changing conditions, and traits that are attractive to vegetable consumers.
We take advantage of modern plant breeding technologies to develop better vegetable crops. Over the years, we have developed some outstanding products that hit a home run among farmers and consumers, and in many ways, transformed the market.
Developing ‘orphan’ crops
“Local crops” as a diverse set of small crops that tend to be regionally important but are not traded around the world and receive little to no attention from commercial breeding companies.
They often have a strong cultural importance and can be vital for the livelihood of smallholder farmers in developing countries.
These are widely grown but neglected “orphan” crops where East-West Seed has shown that a serious quality seed production and good variety maintenance effort can make a huge difference for local growers.
