home news forum careers events suppliers solutions markets expos directories catalogs resources advertise contacts
 
Forum Page

Forum
Forum sources  
All Africa Asia/Pacific Europe Latin America Middle East North America
  Topics
  Species
 

Vegetable variety breeding at Bejo - Seed breeding company Bejo in Warmenhuizen serves the world with continuously better, more climat proof and more nutritious crops


Warmenhuizen, The Netherlands
April 30, 2015

Door: Carlijne Vos - Volkskrant

Image van het complete krantenartikel

In the large production halls, immense automated grading machines are rattling, sieving, weighting, grading and counting vegetable seeds. Forklift trucks with funnel scoops and plastic bags go to and fro. In the ‘oscillating trieur separator’, ‘spiral’ or ‘sieve’, the best seeds are selected by weight, size, shape and colour. This way, ‘empty’ or half seeds are filtered out and weed and soil residue is thrown out. The bags will have only the very best, pure sowing goods.

Annually, about 2,000 tons of vegetable seeds are sorted by quality at Bejo Zaden in Warmenhuizen, North Holland. The seeds are derived from production fields from all over the world: from France and Italy to New Zealand, Vietnam and South Africa. Then after the quality checks in Warmenhuizen, they are sold to vegetable growers and traders in over 100 countries.

The simple plant buildings and greenhouses in the still wintery-looking polders near Warmenhuizen do not raise any suspicion that this concerns one of the world’s largest vegetable seed breeding and processing companies in the world. Bejo, a very traditional Dutch company, is part of the global top 10 of seed breeders, in the list after food giants such as Monsanto and Syngenta, and together with other Dutch family businesses Rijk Zwaan and Enza seeds. ‘The world’s epicentre of seed breeding is right here in the Netherlands, in the upper section of North Holland, to be precise’, says John-Pieter Schipper, the Managing Director, with pride. ‘And we are pleased to see that our industry is getting increasingly noticed. Even agricultural farmers until recently hardly understood what it takes to develop a new variety. Now the interest in studies of plant breeding and biotechnology is rapidly increasing.’

Bejo produces over 50 crops, subdivided in over 1,000 different varieties. Some are suited to the Dutch climate, others to sunnier places in southern Europe, others again are better resistant against certain fungis or diseases, others are perfect for the higher temperatures in South Africa. The average of 40 new vegetable varieties that Bejo annually develops are the result of classic breeding: crossing plant species. A technology that is rumoured to have germinated in the Dutch polders. In Warmenhuizen, the first steps into breeding were taken by Jacob Jong, a grocer, and Cor Beemsterboer, a baker’s son. The two entrepreneurs initially focused on trading in vegetable seeds. They quickly switched their attention to growing seeds and their very own vegetable species. They each established a company in the polders of North Holland. In the 1960s, the companies started collaborating in the field of a new breeding technology: hybridisation. This means breeding stronger varieties by crossing a mother line with a father line. In 1978 they merged into Bejo Zaden (Bejo Seeds); the start of an international success story. Bejo initially mainly produced open field seeds such as onions, cabbage and carrots, quickly expanding into so-called ‘fruit crops’ including tomatoes, peppers and aubergine. In the 1980s, the company expanded into Europe, and quickly onwards into other continents. Meanwhile, Bejo has breeding stations and experimental gardens in thirty countries worldwide, selling seeds in over 100 countries. ‘This concerns autonomous growth’, says Schipper. ‘We did not act from expansion strategies, but rather based on the logic of the range. For example, if a certain cauliflower variety grew vigorously in Poland, we always looked for properties in other varieties to add these to the plant, making the species also suitable for other markets. This is how we got into South Africa.’ The technological seed laboratory in Warmenhuizen not only checks and selects the seeds for quality before worldwide delivery; it also improves the seeds. Using steam or hot water, the seeds are decontaminated, ensuring that bacteria or fungis have no chance. They are selected by germinating power. At long tables under glaring light, the physiologists check the plants emerging from round cotton pads. With tweezers, they check the germination power of each batch of seeds sent in under various growth conditions: more light or less, more moisture or more heat.

In the past fifteen years, the company’s significant investment in the quickly developing gene technology is paying off. The discovery of plant gene charts in the last years of the previous century virtually halved the development process of a new variety. Where in the past, it took fifteen years to breed a new variety and test it in the trial fields, it may take as little as eight years now. ‘Now that we can read the plant’s DNA in the laboratory, we do not need to grow thousands of plants first in order to discover a certain resistance. That saves an incredible amount of production costs and time’, says Schipper. For the future, there are plenty of options of developing more robust, climate-proof, tasty and more nutritious vegetables.

Meanwhile, Bejo invests 15% of its sales in Research and Development to stay ahead of the competition, and also to respond to global climate and economic changes. ‘The availability of agricultural land and water is a global problem’, says Schipper. ‘We are increasingly confronted with more water, or more drought, or more salification. You must take that into consideration when developing the new varieties.’

The shareholders give Bejo plenty of space to invest in R&D. ‘Investing is not a problem to our company’, says Schipper. ‘That is the great thing about a family business. We are not working for short-term profits. We focus on developing quality. We think only in terms of long horizons.’ Schipper mainly sees chances in potential growth in emerging countries such as Africa and Asia, where increased prosperity has raised interest in vegetables. ‘Citizens of such countries are mainly used to starch-based food. First they move on to meat, before discovering the much healthier vegetables. Even more important is the professionalisation round that farmers in those regions are making, says Schipper. ‘It is no use buying high-quality seeds from us if you are simply throwing them on the ground. This is an investment that will generate interesting returns only when using better sowing and agricultural methods.’

This is why Bejo makes significant investments in improving knowledge of agricultural methods of farmers abroad. ‘In Central America, we were really able to make a difference’, says Schipper. ‘You can see a snowball effect once farmers have seen how crops can be grown much better.’

Schipper aims to achieve the same snowball effect by spreading organic crops, something Bejo has focused on for the past fifteen years. In a number of crops, including onions, the company from Warmenhuizen may call themselves the organic market leader. ‘Vegetable crops will never become fully organic. But developing varieties that are resistant to diseases and climate-proof makes pesticides and fertilisers increasingly superfluous.’



More news from: Bejo Zaden BV


Website: http://www.bejo.com

Published: April 30, 2015



SeedQuest does not necessarily endorse the factual analyses and opinions
presented on this Forum, nor can it verify their validity.

 

 

12 books on plant breeding, classic, modern and fun
 

12 livres sur l'amélioration des plantes : classiques, modernes et amusants

 
 

The Triumph of Seeds

How Grains, Nuts, Kernels, Pulses, and Pips Conquered the Plant Kingdom and Shaped Human History

By Thor Hanson 

Basic Books

 
 

 

 

Hybrid
The History and Science of Plant Breeding
 

Noel Kingsbury
The University of Chicago Press

 

 
1997-2009 archive
of the FORUM section
.

 


Copyright @ 1992-2024 SeedQuest - All rights reserved