Author Description

The seed business plays a crucial role at the basis of the food supply chain, and companies which are active in plant breeding and production and sales of seeds are embedded in a competitive environment. They continuously face challenges to develop higher yielding varieties with better or new qualities, optimized for sustainable production under a wide variety of growing conditions. To meet those challenges innovation through R&D is extremely important. For this study, I chose the vegetable breeding industry as the subject of this research and focused on two similar business sectors in two different parts of the world, China and the Netherlands. In China the vegetable breeding industry is developing fast, has access to an exceptionally large internal market, and is experiencing a transition from a planned to a market economy. In 2013 the total number of licensed seed companies was approximately 6,500. Most of them, however, are only active in seed trade. There were 112 true vegetable breeding companies (VBCs), active in breeding new varieties, seed production and sales. These companies were divided in 1) public VBCs, often originating from vegetable research institutes; 2) domestic private VBCs; and 3) foreign private VBCs, including wholly foreign-owned subsidiaries and joint ventures. In contrast to the situation in China, the vegetable breeding industry in the Netherlands is an established industry, which has developed into one of the most innovative and outstanding in the world. It accounts for one third of the world’s vegetable seed exports and one eighth of the world’s vegetable seed imports. Due to a period of consolidation the top ten VBCs in the world account for over 85% of the global vegetable seed market. Most of these companies originated in the Netherlands or have important R&D facilities in the Netherlands. Innovation is important for the vegetable breeding industries in both countries although they are at different stages of development. The objectiv