Most think of innovation as high-tech gadgets, but in agriculture, it’s about creating new crops through traditional methods. Dr Lukeshni Chetty, general manager of Sansor, shows how South Africa’s seed market innovates with crops like butternut, helping farmers grow food sustainably despite climate challenges.
“Innovation” most often makes people think of new technology. We may, for example, contemplate the new features set to be included in the latest models of our favourite cell phone brands or think about what artificial intelligence will deliver next.
We rarely think about innovation when we pick up a tomato, a cabbage or a butternut at a grocery store. However, the use of traditional breeding methods to create novel crops is a form of innovation that is vital to sustainable food production and food security. Improving crops is a central part of our shared human story from the time we first began to farm our food instead of hunting or gathering it.
And this innovation is as relevant today as it was then, as farmers increasingly need to meet the higher demand for food from rising population numbers and challenging growing conditions due to climate change. This requires novel solutions, products and services across the value chain. At the very beginning of this production journey of our food is the seed from which a crop grows.
Innovating butternut production
South Africa fortunately has a highly advanced and competitive seed market with numerous companies not only supplying safe, certified and excellent quality seed but also driving innovation.
This means that all South African farmers have access to the new innovative crop developments which help them meet modern challenges head on.
Take butternut as a case study. It is a favourite vegetable in many South African homes, prepared in a vast variety of ways and is a great source of carbohydrates and micronutrients. But butternut is a warm season crop which means that without a greenhouse environment (and the complicated and expensive infrastructure needed to create it) this crop can only be produced in summer.
Vegetable seed companies have now bred new varieties of butternut for growth in the Northern and Western Cape provinces’ autumn and winter growing seasons.
Trial plantings of these varietals have shown great success in producing high yields over these colder and wet seasons with only the use of a frost cover during the coldest periods.
As an added benefit improved resistance to powdery mildew, a plant disease which plagues squash farmers is also a added benefit due to breeding.
The development of the new varietal means that farmers in these provinces will be able to produce butternut for the domestic market for a much longer period each year than would otherwise be possible. What is more, this could significantly benefit subsistence farmers.
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Extending growing seasons
For anyone who has tried growing their own vegetables, late winter and early spring are referred to as the “hungry gap”.
Without summer’s warmth and longer daylight hours, growing higher calorie crops like butternut, potatoes and maize has always been impossible in winter. This innovation in plant breeding, which effectively shortens the period of winter, which is unproductive, even for just this one relatively higher calorie density crop, would be immensely significant for those farmers who grow their own food.
This is just one of the exciting innovations happening in the seed industry which is impacting broader food security for those of us who source our food in the grocery store, but also for those who grow their own food.
Crop breeding innovations don’t just result in improved crops – through natural breeding techniques brand new crops can also be created. The butternut itself was bred by Charles Leggett of Massachusetts in the US in 1944 by crossbreeding a pumpkin with a gooseneck squash.
Crop innovation and the valuable seeds they produce can transform and widen food production, to the benefit of everyone.
- Dr Lukeshni Chetty is the general manager at Sansor, bringing extensive expertise in agricultural innovation and sustainable farming practices.
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