Why It Matters:
The vegetable seed sector plays a crucial role in global food security and horticultural innovation, providing high-quality seeds that drive productivity, and nutritional diversity. Vegetable breeding focuses on a vast array of species, each requiring specialized breeding techniques to enhance traits such as flavour, shelf life, and disease resistance. This dynamic sector is shaped by evolving consumer preferences, sustainability challenges, and strict regulatory frameworks. Understanding its complexities is essential to appreciating its impact on farmers, food systems, and the future of sustainable agriculture in Europe. For a better view of Europe’s vegetable seed sector, Seed World Europe sat down with Martin van der Voort, Sales & Marketing Director at Bejo in The Netherlands to get his take on the specific intricacies of the vegetable seed sector in Europe and beyond.
Seed World Europe (SWE): Martin, what brought you to the world of seeds?
Martin van der Voort (MvdV): I grew up as the son of a glasshouse grower in the Netherlands and at the age of 23, fresh out of college, I had to make up my mind on what to do. My intention was to step into the family business, but first I wanted to gain some different experiences. A friend of mine advised me to approach seed companies since they offered jobs in which you could travel the whole world free of charge! Well, that sounded great at that age, and I got hired for my first assignment with Sluis & Groot in Enkhuizen. Soon, I got fully absorbed by the seed industry, couldn’t let go for the following 43 years and never longed for the family business again! And the travelling? That never stopped and never bored me.
SWE: How would you characterize the vegetable seeds sector?
MvdV: Economically the vegetable seed sector is a large market, with a high value. According to the latest ISF statistics, the total value of global seed export is just over $16 billion USD, of which close to $5 billion for the vegetable seeds, a little over 30 %. Of the $5 billion vegetable seed exports, $3.2 billion is done from European countries (66%). So, it is safe to say that the vegetable seed sector is a very important segment.
Europe has always been the cradle of innovation and technological development in this sector, and the EU breeding sector can have a huge impact towards a more sustainable cultivation of crops. For example, plant pathogens or abiotic stresses. Plant breeders continue to develop new varieties with resistances to these pathogens and more tolerance to such abiotic stresses. This means there is a much lower need for crop protection products, and a better crop to harvest at the end of the season. As such, the seed sector has a huge impact on food security.
As a company we are working hard on seed technology, where we apply various treatments, such as priming, to the seeds. And this allows the seed to germinate and grow better during the first phase of the plant’s life. Due to changing regulations, we have eliminated nearly all chemical crop protection products on our seeds. However, thanks to technological seed research and development we have high confidence in the quality and strength of our seeds resulting in less damping-off diseases and much better resilience of crops.
A great plus of vegetable crops is that they are a rich source of vitamins and minerals and they make a huge contribution to people’s health. On a global scale, the impact of the vegetable seed sector cannot be underestimated. In developing countries, where micronutrient malnutrition is chronic and debilitating, the imbalanced diets lead to the death of millions of people each year. Vegetables are important sources of micronutrients such as vitamin A, iron and other phytochemicals that are essential to good health. In short, we can say that the vegetable seed sector is a very dynamic, and quite complex sector and plays an important role in human nutrition.
SWE: What are some of the typical dynamics of the vegetable seed sector?
MvdV: The vegetable seed sector is about many crops. Across the main vegetable seed companies breeding is done on more than 50 vegetable species. And these species, each with many different varieties, have their own characteristics, suitable for different climate and growing conditions, soil conditions, disease pressures, harvesting preferences, storability, or consumer preferences. There are also huge differences in cultivation time. For example, spinach is harvested as complete crop in a couple of weeks. As the season progresses and the growing conditions change, a spinach grower will need more spinach varieties in one year. In contrast, one single Asparagus plant produces a harvestable product for about eight years.
A large part of all vegetable seeds is travelling across borders during the process of seed production, seed processing and sales of seeds, so we can easily say that the vegetable seed sector is a very international activity.
Another interesting aspect is the resistance breeding in the various vegetable crops. In lettuce, one of the main pathogens, downy mildew (Bremia lactucae), mutates rapidly and breaks through the genetic resistance. Luckily, lettuce is a crop with a short growing season allowing the breeder to build in a new Bremia resistance in about two years, whereas the process of adding a new resistance in a biennial crop like onion is considerably longer.
The vegetable seed sector has a unique approach to the whole value chain, as seed companies basically develop end-products for consumers, rather than for food processing. In general, a vegetable seed is directly transformed into the vegetable on a consumer’s plate. As a result, there is a very direct relationship with the retailers and consumer organizations. And this obviously leads to different discussions and emotions on New Genomic Techniques (NGTs) and GMOs.
It’s very important that we all understand these dynamics to remain effective. Because the dynamics will never change. On the contrary: we should be able to become more responsive to changing situations such as climate change, urbanization and the strong wish towards more sustainability. All these challenges put a lot of additional pressure on introducing new vegetable varieties.
SWE: Where do you see challenges for the European vegetable seed sector?
MvdV: Looking at the diversity within the vegetable seed sector, it is clear that the EU regulations on Plant Reproductive Material (PRM) must take this diversity into account. Otherwise seed breeding — production, processing and sales — will become unworkable in Europe.
One of the concerns lies with the proposed EU regulations on Value for Sustainable Cultivation and Use (VSCU). These regulations introduce a sustainability component in the VCU process, which is new for vegetables. And this will present quite a burden for the sector. Nonetheless, we have had good discussions on this specific topic, and we are hopeful that the legislation is moving in the right direction.
Apart from that, we also feel that current EU regulations for re-export are quite cumbersome. It should be easier to import seeds from outside the EU, to be processed, cleaned and/or packaged in the EU, and then exported again to countries outside of Europe. The re-export rules need to be conducive to enable efficient international trade and in the new PRM this needs to be fully acknowledged.
It is a well-known fact that plant pathogens continue to mutate and eventually break through the genetic resistances, and we are experiencing a stronger development of new disease strains. Recent examples in spinach and tomatoes (on ToBRFV), show how breeders have been able to respond fast and effectively helping growers to secure food supply. It is of vital importance that breeders maintain their responsiveness. All the more so because regulations on the development, approval and the use of crop protection products are becoming very restrictive.
The breeding of new varieties is often a rat race to produce new resistant varieties in the shortest time possible. We’d like to get the seeds of these new varieties as soon as possible to the growers so they can continue to produce their vegetables in the most sustainable manner. However, the latest version of the PRM proposal contains restrictions on the production and marketing of such varieties before the registration is approved, and these restrictions will lead to major delays in product development. Eventually this will cause significant problems for growers resulting in supply problems to consumers
Another challenge are the exemptions that have been proposed for the informal seed markets. Bejo is very supportive of the organic sector in general. We offer an extensive assortment and invest in solutions to help cultivation organically. However, as it comes to loosening the phytosanitary rules for certain niche sectors, we are very concerned that it may lead to the introduction of dangerous pathogens, which till now we were able to keep out of the EU with the current strict rules. We need to secure the entire EU against uncontrolled plant health risks and not allow such exemptions.
The EU is seeking to regulate new genomic techniques (NGTs). These techniques contribute to sustainably providing a sufficient and healthy food supply from plant varieties with improved characteristics. And with a growing demand for plant-based diets, we feel that plant varieties developed using the latest breeding methods should not be subject to any additional regulations if they could have been produced through classic breeding methods or spontaneous mutation.
Within the Euroseeds Section Vegetables and Ornamentals, we have worked hard on all of these issues, and made big strides to give this attention, which I hope is understood and acknowledged. The vegetable seeds sector is a very valuable and important sector to Europe and to the world and is worth giving adequate attention to remain viable.
SWE: What’s your take on the future of the vegetable seed industry? Are we going in the right direction?
MvdV: It is safe to say that vegetables are and will remain an important source for nutritious diets all over the world. Awareness of the health aspect of vegetables is increasing, and we even observe a tendency to more vegetarian and vegan diets.
We see that in emerging markets the retail side is booming, and this requires high quality vegetables with a good shelf life and a stable and secure supply. Vegetable seed breeders are contributing a lot to these requirements.
At the moment the global seed market is estimated at somewhere between $55 and $60 billion USD and about 12% of this is for vegetable seeds for the professional market, mainly in Europe, North America and North Asia. This means that there is a lot of room for growth in the development of professional vegetable cultivation, still in Europe, North America and North Asia but also significantly in other parts of the world.
Under UN Sustainable Development Goal no. 2, ‘Zero Hunger’, part of the aim is that all people have regular access to safe, nutritious and sufficient food. Bejo strongly supports the aim that enough healthy food is produced. And this creates possibilities for both larger farmers/growers, as well as small-holder farms, to explore and expand into vegetable production and at the same time earn a fair income.
Our company, together with other colleagues of the European vegetable seed sector, has the expertise and experience to greatly contribute to the growing demand, if Europe remains flexible enough to do so.
SWE: You will soon be retiring. What are your own personal plans for the next phase?
MvdV: I believe that one of the great things about retirement is that you can really “re-set” yourself and make room for new learnings and experiences. So, after stepping down this spring I want to take my time to go through this process and curiously look forward to what will cross my path. But one thing I know for sure, this beautiful and meaningful sector has caught me forever and I will follow all future developments closely and of course hope to meet occasionally many of the friends and colleagues I worked with.
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