Natural Selection

The team at Fairbanks Seeds work very closely with vegetable breeders (non-GMO) from all corners of the world to identify vegetables varieties Australians and New Zealanders will love. We strive to find vegetables that look amazing and are packed full of flavour and nutrition.

We then grow these vegetables in the extremes of our local environment to select those most suitable for our market.

We select varieties that require minimal inputs from the farmers, while delivering high yields and highly marketable products for them. This helps to ensure that local farming is sustainable while also producing amazing quality.

Our vegetable breeding partners use natural selection to discover the best varieties for our local farmers. To discover more about out process, see below…

Vegetable Breeding Selecting Varieties Genetic Modification Heirloom Varieties

How does Vegetable Breeding work?

Vegetable plant breeding has occurred for thousands of years, these days vegetable breeders are more knowledgeable and considered in how they conduct this process.

One of the major sources of vegetable breeding is the process of ‘selection’, the processes of selecting plants with desired characteristics and eliminating those with less desirable characteristics. This can occur very simply, that you choose to collect the seeds from the plant that provides you with the most fruit/vegetable product to grow in subsequent seasons. This type of selection is often called indirect selection.

Another method commonly used is the ‘interbreeding’, which involves cross-breeding close or distant relatives of the same plant species to produce desired characteristics. If the plant breeder is looking to enhance a particular characteristic of a plant, they will select the two individual plants (one might have a great colour and the other has great vigour). By cross-breeding these, the plant can have both traits. To ensure that the plant maintains both traits, careful and planned cross-breeding back with the original plant will occur to ensure that they desired traits are carried through to the final version of the plant. This type of plant select is called direct selection.

What are breeders selecting for?

Commercial vegetable breeders select plants for a range of qualities, including –

Higher yields
Desired colour
Vigour (not too fast or slow for particular season)
Increased tolerance to extreme weather conditions (Frost, drought, extreme temperatures)
Disease resistance
Insect resistance
Taste of produce
Extended shelf life of product

Where do the seeds come from?

Fairbanks Seeds sources their seeds from all over the world, enabling them to have a broad range of products available. Typically, the vegetable seeds come from the regions in which the vegetable originated.

Asian vegetable seeds are typically sourced from our Asian suppliers
Basil and wild rocket are generally sourced from Italian suppliers
Brussels sprouts are sourced from The Netherlands
Tomatoes are sourced from all over the world

Screening trials

Each vegetable breeder produces hundreds of different plants that they need to choose from. Fairbanks Seeds works closely with their plant breeders to search for varieties that will work within the diverse Australian conditions. Once these plant varieties have been identified, large scale screening trials are conducted on Australian farms to determine whether the varieties can perform within our climate and conditions.

Often varieties can look amazing in Europe, yet they fail to perform under Australian conditions. Therefore it is important that we test each variety in these large screening trials.

Some lines of vegetables such as tomatoes, lettuce, salad mix will have screening trials with more than 40 different varieties to choose from.

Extensive trials

Once a handful of varieties have shown potential in the screening trials, extensive trials must be conducted to determine the long term viability of the varieties. They must withstand different weather conditions, including extreme temperatures and variable rainfall to determine the best seasons and climate. Some varieties will thrive in the warmer northern states of Australia, whilst others show more success in the cooler climates of the Southern states. Without this extensive trialing Fairbanks Seeds would be unable to make sound recommendations to their loyal farmers.

Marketing

Understanding what individual consumers want is an important part of the process. Fairbanks Fresh strives to understand how home cooks, chefs, etc. use each product so that we can search for varieties that meet these demands. We aim to stay in touch with the community that purchase and consume the vegetable products so that we have a continual and current understanding of what is being demanded.

Equally, it is important that consumers be made aware of new vegetables that are being bred. Whether it be a new type of Asian vegetable, a particularly flavoursome tomato, or the next new ‘superfood’, we must do our utmost to ensure the public is aware of it and what to do with it.

Genetic modification is the process of direct manipulation of an organism’s genome using biotechnology. This process uses technologies to change the genetic makeup of cells, including transferring genes within or across species to produce desirable plant characteristics outside of that which can usually be obtained through conventional breeding.

Fairbanks Seeds does not sell or handle any genetically modified seeds. It is against Australian regulations for any vegetables to be produced in Australia from GMO sources, so all Australian fresh vegetables are GMO free.

Traditional varieties

Heirloom varieties are old cultivars that were commonly grown during earlier periods in human history, but are no longer used in modern large-scale agriculture. These varieties are maintained by gardeners and farmers. All heirloom varieties must be open pollinated to ensure that seeds saved from the plant are true to type.
Most heirloom enthusiasts agree that for a species to be referred to as Heirloom it must pre-date 1945 – which marks the end of World War II. After this point in time, vegetable breeders and growers become increasingly focused on food security using hybrid vegetable seed varieties to assist with this concern. However vegetable breeding has been happening for many years, Fairbanks seeds for instance has been trading in vegetable seeds since 1926.
To overcome the international concern for food security, vegetable seed breeders began searching and breeding for traits such as yield, shelf life and tolerance to environment.

Worldwide fresh food production could not be sustained using traditional varieties, so growers and breeders selected varieties that were more reliable, required less inputs (both fertilizers and herbicides/pesticides) and produced higher yielding crops to ensure that greater production could be obtained from farms without having to increase farming size.

Selected varieties

Years of selective breeding has developed a large range of vegetables and fresh produce that enable growers to produce higher yielding crops from their farms in a more sustainable and efficient manner. These conventionally bred varieties must not be confused with genetically modified varieties, which cannot be sold in Australia.

Open pollinated varieties

Open pollinated vegetable seeds refers to plants that are self-pollinated or are pollinated by another plant of the same variety, the resultant seeds will produce a roughly identical plant. Open pollinated varieties are also called standard varieties. These are produced across generations of plant production, to ensure consistent characteristics are all maintained from generation to generation and anomalies have been bread out of the plant varieties.

Hybrid varieties

In contrast to open pollinated varieties, hybrid plants are a result of a recent cross-breeding. If the plant breeder is looking to enhance a particular characteristic of a plant, they will select the two individual plants (one might have a great colour and the other has great vigour). By cross-breeding these, the plant can have both traits. To ensure that the plant maintains both traits, careful and planned cross-breeding back with the original plant will occur to ensure that they desired traits are carried through to the final version of the plant.

If seeds are saved from hybrid varieties, the resultant crop will produce a wide array of off-types compared to the hybrid variety. Therefore, fresh seed should be purchased for each crop. Hybrids varieties should not be confused with genetically modified organisms, which are prohibited in the Australian fresh produce industry

Can a hybrid become a standard variety?

Yes, a hybrid can become a standard (open pollinated variety). The hybrid seed has to be stabilized, so that is continually grows true to type. This takes a large amount of work over several generations, to carefully select only identical plants to the parents in subsequent generations and discarding any plants that differ in traits. However, it is very unlikely that any resultant open pollinated variety will have the exact same desirable traits that the hybrid has.

Are hybrids unnatural?

Almost all hybrid vegetable seeds are intentional crosses made by vegetable breeders. This said, hybridization can occur in nature and often does when plants are planted in close proximity. Two nearby plants of different species can be cross pollinated by insects or the blowing wind and the resultant seeds can naturally germinate in the soil below, forming a new hybrid.

Very few vegetables we eat today are in their original wild form. Even most heirloom varieties would have gone through natural generational changes over time.