May 13, 2021
We all know the drill: You rinse the broccoli and immediately cut off nearly all the stem because it’s too tough to eat, leaving just the florets.
The waste is always a little disturbing. But isn’t that just the way broccoli is?
Not anymore. Through its seed development program, Syngenta Vegetable Seeds has created a broccoli with tender stems that can be eaten without requiring peeling.
The product line, called EasyBroq, is part of an overall effort by Syngenta to reduce food waste in the supply chain in various ways. A key part of that effort: Producing vegetables that are less likely to spoil in transit, on store shelves or in people’s homes.
Syngenta is responding to a major global challenge. A third of the world’s food is estimated to be lost before it gets to tables. Some of it is wasted well before potential consumers even see the food—whether in the field, due to insects, diseases and weeds, or labor shortages; in storage, from spoilage; or during transportation, from damage or delays.
And a great deal is also lost in stores, in homes and in restaurants, especially in economically developed countries, where food is inexpensive, and many people buy more than they can eat.
“Benefitting all the players”
Food is wasted for different reasons in different cultures. In cities, people may have limited storage space or live alone. For them, one Syngenta response is the seedless mini watermelon, which avoids the need to throw away big portions of a large watermelon before it can be consumed.
Syngenta Vegetable Seeds has created a broccoli—EasyBroq—whose tender stems don’t require peeling before eating.
Longer shelf lives for fruits and vegetables really starts on the farm. Syngenta is working on new varieties that lend themselves to mechanical harvesting, which is faster than picking by hand. When farmers can get the food out of the field more quickly, it has a better chance of ending up on plates before it is too late.
Bill Briggs, Global Breeding Lead for Brassicas at Syngenta (broccoli is a member of the Brassica genus), calls the effort to stop food waste a team game, one that must benefit everyone.
Bill Briggs, Global Breeding Lead for Brassicas at Syngenta.
“If we do something the farmers love, but the processors say it does not work for them—what is the point?’’ Briggs says. “We need to do something benefitting all the players, and at the end of the day, also helps consumers.”
Syngenta has developed a seedless mini watermelon that avoids the need to cut open a large melon that cannot always be finished before it goes bad.
Efficiency in the field
There are more subtleties to farming than people may realize. Take, for instance, the cauliflower plant.
Normally, as cauliflower matures and opens up, the white curd—the part we eat—becomes visible. But if the curd is exposed to too much sun, it turns beige and patchy, a look consumers don’t like. And so, about two weeks before harvest, farmers must cover the curd with the leaves, by hand. That is costly to do, but even more costly if they fail to do it.
Syngenta’s Destinica line of cauliflower varieties have a curd that remains white even in intense sunlight.
To help solve that problem, Syngenta has a new generation of cauliflower varieties, the Destinica product line. Its curd doesn’t require the extra laborious step, because it remains white even in intense sunlight. The trait saves a great deal of human labor and avoids consumers shunning a good plant on looks alone.
Drought tolerance and longer shelf lives
Syngenta is also trying to create food varieties that perform better in drought, which is becoming more widespread with climate change. The seed scientists do that by observing traits in existing plant varieties, and then breeding to make that trait more common.
“This is classic seed breeding,” said Briggs. “The pollen is transferred by hand onto a female plant. For our broccoli breeding program, we do tens of thousands of hand crosses every year.”
There’s nothing new about that approach, although digitally enabled data science makes it easier to know which crosses are likely to meet Syngenta’s goals in advance before seeing them grown in the field.
“This is natural variation,” he said. “It is not about introducing a gene from outside the species.” Briggs, an American who is based in the Netherlands, oversees 14 Brassica breeding programs around the world.
Syngenta is also breeding for plants that have a longer shelf life, such as the Caniles variety of tomatoes. Because it can last for three weeks, the Caniles tomato can be shipped longer distances.
Plants bred for a longer shelf life include Syngenta’s Caniles variety of tomatoes.
That’s important, because in many climates it’s impossible to produce tomatoes except during a very short summer window. “The tomatoes can be grown in Spain or Morocco and shipped to Russia,” said - Jérémie Chabanis, Syngenta’s Value Chain Head for Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
Waste from packaging is another Syngenta target. Many cucumbers are sold wrapped in plastic, which is used to enhance shelf life. To avoid the need for that plastic, Syngenta has created a cucumber seed with a longer shelf life.
Because cucumbers bred by Syngenta have a long shelf life, they don’t need the plastic packaging that many other types of cucumbers require to keep them fresh in transit and in the store.
A broccoli’s many benefits
Although the EasyBroq broccoli now provides benefits throughout the supply chain, development began with a simple Syngenta realization: Farmers were looking for a plant that was easier to harvest by hand. EasyBroq has filled that need, because the florets are more visible in the plant and the softer stem makes for a quicker cut.
“Certain aspects of this come from being with the farmers and knowing what it takes, what their challenges are,’’ Briggs says. “That led to this concept of an easier broccoli.”
Angela Mula, a commercial director for Agrícola Santa Eulalia farm in Murcia, Spain, which specializes in broccoli production and other vegetables, said: “This new variety should help us to differentiate our offer in an arena that has become a commodity, with low prices. It provides a way to grow something different that gives the consumer better taste.”
Others along the value chain who appreciate EasyBroq include Massimo Siboni, Vegetables Supply Manager at Orogel, a producer of frozen foods. He said the broccoli is a boon to shoppers, because they are eating 100 percent of what they buy.
And producers of frozen foods, Massimo said, can put the whole broccoli in premium products, because the stem is both tasty and easier to cut. Frozen food has become more important to people during the pandemic, he said, because “people are not going to the shop every day.”
The European supermarket chain Auchan began selling EasyBroq in March 2020.
“Shoppers liked it,” said David Bodas, Syngenta’s Vegs Seeds Value Chain Lead for Spain “mainly because the entire stem was edible, is tasty and is different to a standard and commoditized broccoli, and they are also looking at the innovation in vegetables.”
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