Three regional seed companies report that their entire portfolio consists of varieties older than five years. Excluding Novalliance partner companies, for 48% of the crops in company portfolios the youngest variety offered is older than five years. Compared to regional companies in Eastern and Southern Africa, this is relatively high, likely a result of the small number of seed companies with their own breeding program. Meanwhile, global companies – all with active breeding programs – report that for 60% of the crops in their portfolio the youngest variety is less than three years old. Only for a few crops do more companies report selling hybrids than open-pollinated varieties. In field crops, this is only the case for maize.
Integration with the World Benchmarking Alliance
The Access to Seeds Index is now part of the World Benchmarking Alliance. All indexes up to 2020 can be found here. New indexes and methodologies are published on the website of the WBA.
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