'Super vegetables' coming to a table near you

Healthier and tastier veges being designed. File picture

KANSAS CITY - At Seminis, the world's largest fruit and vegetable seed company, carrots come in a rainbow of colours and flavours, lettuce grows perfectly sandwich-sized and a menu of "super vegetables" such as cancer-fighting broccoli are in development.

Industry experts say a growing demand for healthier and tastier foods is driving this effort to remake many of the world's common consumption crops. And it is pushing Seminis - fortified by Monsanto, the biggest player in farm biotech - to use a range of plant breeding innovations as it vies with competitors for coveted market share and grocery shelf space around the globe.

"We're seeing a total revolution. We now have a much wider range of products, which are designed with the end-user, the consumer, in mind," said Verdant Partners consultant Rod Stacey, who specialises in global seed industry issues.

Californian-based Seminis is the industry leader in the US$2.4 billion ($3.8 billion) vegetable seed trade, garnering revenues of US$565 million last year, marketing seeds for specialised sweet yellow peppers, hybrid spinach, "Bambino" personal-sized, seedless watermelons and other foods that are part of a collection of more than 3000 seed varieties.

Seminis said it controlled 34 per cent of the North American vegetable seed market and supplied 23 per cent of the world tomato seed market.

The company was founded by a group of Mexican businessmen in 1994 and grew through a series of mergers. But amid competition with Switzerland-based Syngenta Seeds, Groupe Limagrain's Paris-based Vilmorin Clause & Cie, Germany-based Bayer CropScience and others, Seminis stumbled over inventory management, product marketing and other issues, leaving itself on shaky financial ground.

That changed a year ago when agricultural technology giant Monsanto of St Louis, Missouri, bought Seminis for US$1.4 billion in cash and assumed debt. Now, with US$5 billion-asset Monsanto muscle backing it, Seminis is emerging as a more powerful player in the evolution of how the world eats.

"The company has changed focus and gotten better," said seed industry consultant Tim Tryon. "They were going down the wrong path fast." Under Monsanto's umbrella, Seminis is employing its molecular breeding technology to speed the roll-out of seeds designed with characteristics for higher yields, improved quality and enhanced disease resistance. Onions, carrots, tomatoes, all can be had in varying colours, tastes and textures.

For consumers, the company is also focused on new varieties of broccoli that have three times as many cancer-fighting compounds than regular broccoli, tomatoes with enhanced antioxidant levels and other offerings - or "super vegetables" - with enhanced flavour as well as nutrition.

The company is also revising its marketing strategies for products like lettuce grown firm and folded so its leaves can be used instead of bread to hold sandwich fillings.

But the marriage of Monsanto's technology and Seminis' market reach has sparked concern in some industry sectors, particularly for organic goods' purveyors, who eschew anything genetically modified, a Monsanto specialty.

Vege revolution

* The global seed trade is worth US$2.4 billion.

* Consumers are fuelling the drive for better-tasting, improved vegetables.

* Molecular breeding technology is being used to develop seeds designed with higher yields, improved quality and enhanced disease resistance.

* Onions, carrots and tomatoes can all be had in varying colours, tastes and textures.

- REUTERS