Israeli seed company Hazera has said its 'extensive' research and development (R&D) budget has helped it to produce a large range of high-performance onion varieties and see strong year-on-year sales growth in various markets. 

Within a period of ten years, the company’s market share has gone up to 12% of the world’s onion seed market.

The organization said 15% of its revenues were dedicated to R&D, and since 1974 when the it began investing in research for high-performance onion hybrids it had been able to release a large number of attractive products.

Much of this research has been focused on the Extra Long Day segment (for regions at latitude above 50°) and the Short Day segment (latitude up to 30°).

"With these hybrid varieties, we have achieved strong improvement of yields and quality,” global onion product manager Wim van der Heijden said in an interview conducted by Hazera.

"New traits and characteristics for the benefit of growers, industry and consumers could be introduced much faster, taking the crop quickly to higher levels."

Some examples of these new traits include the uniformity of the seeds to enable precision sowing, several skin layers to protect the onion during processing and transport, and high dormancy preventing regrowth of the bulbs.

"Also very important: a round uniform shape that goes along with improved yields, facilitates harvesting and processing and gives a more attractive product on the supermarket’s shelf," van der Heijden said.

"Another appreciated quality is flexibility: varieties that can be sown as well as transplanted and that can stand very different climatic conditions."

The category manager said one of the most important improvements the company had been working on since the beginning was a higher firmness of the onion, making it suitable for long storage. Such an improvement takes hard work and a long breeding process during which 'you have to make the right choices continuously', he said.

Some of the varieties that stand out for their storability are Extra Long Day cultivars like Centro and Dormo, and the Long Day cultivar Taresco.

Van der Heijden noted disease resistance had also been an important point of attention, with one of the standout successes being the introduction of varieties highly resistant to the devastating Downy mildew, which can completely destroy harvests.

Hazera global onion product manager Wim van der Heijden

"Our variety Santero offering this resistance was very welcomed also by organic growers who suffered much from this disease," he said.

"And now we are anticipating worldwide growing disease pressure from the soil by developing varieties featuring resistance to Pink root and Fusarium, such as Miss Scarlet that we recently introduced."

Another focus in breeding are colored varieties, with the company having extended its range from the classic yellow to red, pink and white onions. A highlight of this segment is Sivan variety, which van der Heijden said had 'a nice pink color, high reliability and flexibility for the grower, and a delicious mild taste for the consumer.'

Hazera said all this 'hard and systematic work over several decades', based on extensive investment in R&D, had led to strong market results.

“In several segments and regions, we are now writing double-digit growth figures, not only compared with 5 years ago, but even with last year’s results," Van der Heijden said.

"We reached these results in for example Western Europe, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Oceania. In Asian countries like the Philippines, India or Pakistan, and in other countries such as Morocco and Brazil, perspectives are very good for further growth."

Hazera said it currently held the onion market leader position in a whole range of countries around the globe, like Germany, Israel, Belarus, the Middle East region including Saudi Arabia, the Dominican Republic and Greece.

It added it was the upcoming second party in Benelux - the economic union between the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg - as well as Scandinavia, France, the U.K., Poland and Peru.

The company is also moving up in Australia and New Zealand - countries for which it has been breeding Intermediate type varieties with high yield and long storability for export.

"We’ll continue to invest extensively in research and in the development of innovations for markets worldwide," Van der Heijden said.

"Yield and storability will further increase, and we’ll add improved earliness to the crop. We’ll bring new disease resistances for a healthier crop that can be grown with less chemicals.

"Very promising are our Set Onions. These are young prepared plants that are planted very early in the season for very early harvesting (already from June), enabling year round supply and extending the zones where onions can be grown. From the year 2011 we’ve achieved double-digit growth also in set onions."

Photos: Hazera

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