The collaboration focuses on four key segments within cucumber, pepper, and tomato breeding programmes to develop and execute breeding work-flows etc
BASF’s vegetable seeds business has collaborated with Nature Source Improved Plants (NSIP) as an external collaborator since 2008, but as of July 1, 2021, the company has entered into a more intensive, comprehensive partnership. The collaboration focuses on four key segments within cucumber, pepper, and tomato breeding programmes to develop and execute breeding work-flows, combining the NSIP genomic selection toolbox and BASF germplasm.
Under the terms of the multi-year agreement, NSIP will work closely with selected breeding teams, applying their extensive bank of algorithms to improve data-driven decision making throughout the breeding and selection process. “By applying these algorithms with additional phenotyping, our breeding teams will improve the output of our predictive breeding efforts,” says Johan Warringa, Head of R&D EMEA, Vegetable Seeds, BASF. Predictive breeding brings together tools such as phenotyping, genomic selection, and statistics will to help breeders make data-driven predictions of which lines will perform best in a given situation.
Dr Suresh Prabhakaran, COO, NSIP, said, “We aim to be a trusted strategic partner and advance the frontiers of genomics and production technologies. We are excited to leverage complementary expertise of NSIP and BASF’s vegetable seeds business to help increase productivity and meet the current and future food needs of our global community.”
