Reducing food waste

Eating food and not throwing it away. It sounds simple. Yet a third of all food is discarded worldwide. During the cultivation phase, the production process, in the supermarket or by consumers.

That is why we are always looking for plant properties that extend the shelf life of fruit and vegetables. For example, lettuce that discolours less quickly due to our Knox™ property or cucumbers that have a longer shelf life thanks to a firmer skin. A ‘flatter’ broccoli or cauliflower makes it easier and more efficient to cut the florets by machine. This way, vegetable cutting companies discard less product. The Caribbean Gold melon is a good example. Due to its uniform ripening and long shelf life, this melon is ideal for transport from Latin America to Europe. Our courgette varieties now also have a longer shelf life, even when not packaged

More heat, less fresh water

Plants are stressed by heat, a salty soil and a shortage of fresh water. This results in fewer fruits and less efficient plants. What can we do? Well, we can convert seawater into usable fresh water, but this is very expensive. Or we can move horticulture to ‘climate-friendly’ areas, but that’s difficult. Countries want to be self-sufficient and have food production as close to densely populated areas as possible.

Vegetable and fruit varieties that thrive in hot and dry growing areas are a good solution. A tomato rootstock with a strong root system is a good example of this. With this rootstock, a tomato plant grows better in dry, salty soil. Or take our cucumber variety that still produces excellent cucumbers even in extreme heat. It is not for nothing that our research and breeding locations in southern Spain and Turkey have expanded in recent years.

Climate control in the greenhouse

Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) is controlled cultivation in a high-tech greenhouse or plant factory. Crops in these types of technological greenhouses receive optimal light, water and nutrients, resulting in higher yields than outdoor cultivation. Water is reused, the nutrients are administered very precisely and there is minimal use of crop protection products. With so little raw material use and high, stable yields, CEA is a cultivation method that uses scarce resources such as fertile land and clean water very efficiently and sustainably.

Lettuce, tomato and cucumber are probably the crops that immediately come to mind when we talk about CEA. But there are more. In the United States, we introduced the first spinach varieties for controlled hydroponic systems in 2023. We have also held trials with radish, endive and other open-field crops. Did you know that melon and our newest product category ‘berries’ are also increasingly grown indoors?

Mission Green Crops, Green Seeds

In 2022, we asked internal experts in seed production and breeding and the industry as a whole for their opinion on the use of chemical crop protection products. The majority believe it is important that Rijk Zwaan reduces the use of chemicals. It is better for the environment. Added to that, increasingly fewer chemical crop protection products are legally permitted in the European Union. In short, there are plenty of reasons to start doing this as a company.

Through the ‘Mission Green Crops, Green Seeds’ programme, we are reducing chemicals in our own seed production and breeding crops and focusing on selling chemical-free seeds. Half of the seeds that we currently sell are treated without chemicals. In the years to come, we will continue to work on reducing chemical use.

Seed production with less input

Rijk Zwaan Promex produces cucumber, tomato and pepper seeds. The modern seed production greenhouse is divided into different parts. Three parts (departments) are semi-closed, which enables us to control the outside air that comes in. One of the advantages of this is that insects from outside don’t enter the greenhouse as easily, which reduces the disease pressure and chemical use.

Thanks to this positive experience in Mexico, Rijk Zwaan Australia also plans to build a semi-closed greenhouse for seed production next year. The first cucumber seed cultivation purely with biological control – without any spraying – is now also a reality. A great achievement by the Mission Green programme.

A reverse osmosis installation was put into operation in 2023 that efficiently recycles irrigation water back into the greenhouse. This method creates a residual flow of water. Our colleagues want to use this residual flow as rinsing water for seed cleaning.