“Shall I not have intelligence with the earth?
Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself?”
—Henry David Thoreau, Walden
While litterateurs interpret this passage from Thoreau’s Walden as the American poet’s expression of his essential oneness with nature, it also neatly sums up the outlook of researchers at the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center (AVRDC)—The World Vegetable Center, as farmers rely on their intelligence to grow vegetables from the earth, and people need to consume an adequate amount of vegetables to maintain good health.
The center focuses on vegetables to address a looming problem: While research, development and technology transfer initiatives since the Green Revolution of the 1940s through late 1960s have greatly enhanced the production of staple crops that feed millions of people, particularly in developing countries, it seems that policymakers have overlooked the importance of balanced nutrition. Dyno Keatinge, director general of the center, notes that vegetables are humanity’s most important source of the fiber, micronutrients, minerals and vitamins essential for a balanced and healthy diet. In some countries, however, vegetable production is too low to provide many residents with even the minimum vegetable intake required for good health. “The consumption falls well below the World Health Organization-accepted norm, which is 400 grams of vegetables and fruits per person per day,” he says. “Malnutrition thus remains a severe problem for many people worldwide, and this challenges them with a wide range of non-communicable diseases that brings overwhelming health costs.”
The center has been at the forefront of the struggle for nutrition security since its establishment. To promote vegetable production and consumption, representatives from the Asian Development Bank and countries including the Republic of China, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Thailand, the United States and Vietnam met in Taipei in 1971 and signed the Memorandum of Understanding for the Establishment of the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center. Construction of the 117-hectare campus’ research fields, laboratories and greenhouses began in 1972 in Shanhua Township, Tainan County (now Shanhua District, Tainan City) in southern Taiwan, and the nonprofit organization started operating in 1973. Core funding for the center’s basic administrative structure comes from seven national governments and The Asia and Pacific Seed Association, while another 20 governments, foundations and the private sector contributors fund a range of specific research and development (R&D) projects.
The center derives a number of advantages from being located in Taiwan. The country’s position on the Tropic of Cancer and mountains that rise to almost 4,000 meters create four tropical and subtropical climatic zones, for example, allowing many opportunities for researching vegetable production under diverse conditions. Meanwhile, the government and universities participate in an established agriculture research system that is more than willing to share its resources. The center has also worked closely with Taiwan’s agricultural technical missions, which incorporate its research results as they assist farmers in developing countries in many parts of the world. “Taiwan has been very generous to us and the support Taiwan has been providing is invaluable,” Keatinge says.
After initially focusing on tropical Asia as it built expertise and capacity, the AVRDC expanded its efforts and adopted its current name in 2008 to reflect its global scope. According to Maureen Mecozzi, the organization’s head of communications and information, the center now has 300 staff members, including around 50 internationally recruited scientists and professionals, who work at the Shanhua headquarters as well as in regional bases serving East and Southeast Asia, South Asia, West and Central Asia, East and Southern Africa, West and Central Africa, and Oceania. The center’s overseas teams lead and participate in projects dedicated to “alleviating poverty and malnutrition in the developing world through the increased production and consumption of nutritious and health-promoting vegetables,” the center’s mission statement reads.
The conference on establishing the AVRDC was held in Taipei in 1971. (Photo courtesy of AVRDC—The World Vegetable Center)
To accomplish that mission, the center focuses on the four core areas of germplasm (collections of the hereditary material of plant germ cells), breeding, production and consumption. With more than 60,000 individual germplasm, also referred to as accessions, of 437 species from 156 countries, the center operates the largest public-sector vegetable germplasm genebank in the world. The germplasm collection includes globally important vegetables such as cabbage, onions, peppers and tomatoes, as well as more than 10,000 indigenous vegetable accessions. Genebank manager Andreas Ebert explains that these indigenous species are often hardy, highly nutritious and thrive on less fertilizer or other costly inputs than crops that have a more widespread distribution. “Maintaining the genebank is gaining greater importance as vegetable diversity has been decreasing thanks to the reduced area of agricultural land,” he says.
The genebank’s seeds are dehydrated and stored at low temperatures, a process that keeps them viable for up to 100 years. To enhance security, part of the center’s germplasm collection is stored in genebanks in Norway and South Korea.
The center analyzes selected germplasm for genetic diversity and molecular characterization to identify markers and map genes linked to important agronomic traits such as disease resistance, high nutritional value and stress tolerance. “This significantly enhances the efficiency of breeding programs as key genes can be identified for introgression into improved lines,” Ebert says. Each year, the center distributes about 10,000 seed samples to researchers across the globe. Over the past four decades, this has led to the breeding and release of hundreds of new vegetable varieties that promise to benefit developing countries.
Ebert notes that the center’s largest single project, Vegetable Breeding and Seed Systems for Poverty Reduction in Africa, has developed more than 90 superior open-pollinated lines of vegetables for sub-Saharan Africa and worked with local companies to produce seeds for such plants for smallholder farmers. “There has been virtually no public breeding of improved vegetables for sub-Saharan Africa for decades, so smallholder farmers can’t improve their yields and small seed companies have little improved product to sell,” he says.
In setting up the sub-Saharan program, the center was able to draw on its long-term engagement with the vegetable seed industry in Asia, as about three-quarters of Asian vegetable seed companies use AVRDC lines. “This project is built on our experience in working with small seed companies in Asia that have a market niche in producing quality seed of superior open-pollinated vegetable varieties for smallholder farmers, which is not a market of interest to multinationals,” Ebert says.
The center’s development of improved postharvest management techniques ensures that better quality vegetables reach the market. (Photo courtesy of AVRDC—The World Vegetable Center)
Humanitarian organizations also request the center’s seed kits for disaster relief operations. Willie Chen, an assistant specialist with the center’s Global Technology Dissemination group, notes that the disaster relief kits include seeds of locally adapted varieties of nutrient-rich and fast-growing vegetables. Technical information in local languages on vegetable production, food preparation and preservation methods is also provided. Since 2000, the center has distributed more than 35,000 disaster seed kits through humanitarian agencies in relief efforts in several countries.
After Typhoon Morakot caused serious damage and loss of life in southern Taiwan in August 2009, for example, the center responded to a request from World Vision Taiwan by distributing about 130 kilograms of seeds to 32 villages in the affected area in the four months following the typhoon. “When natural disasters destroy food production systems, vegetables can help rebuild local food supplies and provide nutrition for survivors,” Chen says.
In the area of production, farmers have battled the enemies of disease, viruses and insects since the dawn of agriculture. “Humans like vegetables because they’re tasty and nutritious, but pests and diseases feel the same way,” Keatinge says. “Our problems lie in the rapid rate at which they all mutate, and in global warming’s potential to cause more generations of harmful insects per year.” Research on developing vegetable varieties and lines with improved disease resistance, heat tolerance and ability to withstand other stressors, therefore, has always been a priority for the center’s labs.
Meanwhile, the center develops safe, efficient production methods for smallholder farmers in different regions. Chen notes that while farmers must protect crops from pests and diseases, the misuse of pesticides is a serious problem in developing countries. The center therefore puts a great amount of effort into helping farmers adopt biological, crop management and mechanical techniques for fighting pests and bacterial, fungal and viral diseases in vegetables. A bamboo scaffold covered with screening, for example, can save plants from being destroyed by an afternoon shower or eaten by birds, while rotating the cultivation of certain vegetables with rice can kill most of the insects that harm the vegetables by drowning them when rice paddies are flooded. “These methods have been adopted by Taiwanese farmers for a long time but are new to farmers in developing countries,” Chen says. “They’re actually quite low-tech, but that’s exactly why they can be copied easily and cheaply.”
Postharvest management also has a big impact on vegetable quality and farmers’ income. “Harvested vegetables are still living,” Mecozzi says. “They respire and age and can spoil easily without appropriate postharvest treatments.” Postharvest losses of 9 to 25 percent for a given amount of production are common and can reach 40 percent in some places. These costs are borne by farmers as reduced farm gate prices (the amount farmers actually receive for their produce) and by consumers as increased purchase prices.
The center’s studies show that in developing countries, women are usually responsible for growing and selling vegetables, while men tend to cultivate staple crops. (Photo courtesy of AVRDC—The World Vegetable Center)
To ensure the delivery of more healthy vegetables from field to market, the center has developed a number of simple, low-cost postharvest management technologies. One of them is a portable hydro cooler that slows the ripening process. When used with tomatoes, for example, the cooler delays reddening and maintains quality. The cooler comprises a frame made of galvanized iron pipes and a lining of woven bamboo slats and plastic sheeting. Water and ice are added to produce the cooling effect.
Mecozzi says studies have shown that in many developing countries, women are responsible for growing and selling vegetables, while men are more likely to cultivate staple crops. “Women grow vegetables in home gardens for family use and for market sales, providing an important source of nutrition and income,” she says. “Oftentimes, vegetables generate the only cash resource for women to use for the welfare of their families.” Improving smallholder production and postharvest management for vegetables therefore can have a direct benefit for women in such countries.
Cultivating Skills
While better production technologies are helpful, farmers must master a wide range of skills in order to successfully produce and market their crops. To teach such skills, the center has been providing training courses for more than 20 years in Africa and more than 30 years in Southeast Asia. The length of the farmers’ courses typically ranges from two days to three weeks.
The center also runs long-term, three-to-five-month intensive courses for local researchers. Such courses provide one of the very few affordable professional development opportunities for in-service training of public- and private-sector researchers in developing countries. Networks of researchers who have taken the courses have developed in many countries in Africa and Asia, and in many cases the researchers have gone on to make significant contributions to the development of the vegetable industry in their country. The center’s study of the impact of two decades of such training in Southeast Asia showed it reduced poverty, increased farmer incomes and health, and contributed to a better environment through the adoption of more sustainable production practices.
The center is also expanding its educational programs for children. In 2013, for example, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation began funding a project called Vegetables Go to School: Improving Nutrition by Agricultural Diversification. The center runs the project and plans to execute it in three phases over nine years to address malnutrition, particularly among children, by establishing school vegetable garden programs in Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Nepal and Tanzania. To ensure the school gardens have broad support in each country, the project will bring together high-level representatives of the local agriculture, health and education sectors. The initiative is also developing a web-based interactive platform with which students, project partners, school administrators and teachers can report health and harvest data, post maps and photos, and share growing methods and techniques.
The center has provided field training courses for local researchers and farmers for decades. (Photo courtesy of AVRDC—The World Vegetable Center)
By the end of the project’s first phase, which will run through 2015, it is estimated that 6,000 school children in each participating country will have learned of the importance of a diverse, balanced and nutritious diet, as well as how to grow and prepare healthy vegetables. “Schools are targeted as an entry point because they offer an ideal setting to familiarize children with health-promoting values and habits,” Keatinge says. “By integrating vegetable gardens with other school-based health, nutrition, sanitation and environmental initiatives, important messages can be reinforced to promote long-term behavior change among students, their families and communities.”
Finding the Balance
The organization’s scientists and professionals have collaborated with farmers to research and develop well-adapted cultivars and technologies that increase yields and incomes in developing countries. Finding an R&D balance, however, has not been an easy job. According to Keatinge, it is easier for the center to attract funds for development work than it is for research. “Upstream research can take decades to see some results,” Keatinge says. “Many of our donors, unfortunately, prefer immediate results.”
An even greater challenge arises from the fact that fruit and vegetable research has been seriously underfunded around the world for the last 50 years. Most funding goes to staple cereals, as governments are much more concerned with achieving food security than gaining nutritional security, although the latter is equally important. As an example of that disparity, Keatinge points out that the annual budget for the International Rice Research Institute—an international independent research and training organization headquartered in the Philippines—is well more than US$100 million, while that of his organization is only around US$15 million.
If a fundamental change in nutritional awareness cannot be achieved and related funding does not increase, Keatinge believes that while the world may be able to feed its population in 2050, relatively few people will have a properly balanced diet. “This is a tragedy presently waiting to happen,” he says.
In October 2013, the center celebrated the completion of its fourth decade of effort aimed at improving the livelihoods and health of people in Africa, Asia and Oceania. “Although our work of 40 years is by no means complete, it does represent a major step forward in bringing prosperity to the poor and health for all,” Keatinge said in his opening address. Taiwan, as host of the center’s headquarters, is proud to have contributed to that progress, and will continue to work with the center to ensure that more people in more countries are able to share in the wondrous benefits of vegetables.
Write to Jim Hwang at cyhuang03@mofa.gov.tw