Plant breeding training boosts seed quality, hot pepper sector growth

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) recently concluded a pivotal three-day plant breeding for hot pepper production under its Improving Phytosanitary, Food Safety and Market Access Opportunities along the Hot Pepper Value Chain Project between October 30 and November 1.

The session marked a significant development in Jamaica’s hot pepper sector, supporting the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Mining’s initiative to establish a National Seed Certification System for hot pepper production.

Bringing together 35 participants, the training focused on skill-building and enhancing techniques for plant breeders from the Research and Development Division (Bodles and Montpelier), private seed producers, and farmers from key hot pepper-growing parishes, including St Elizabeth, Clarendon, St Catherine, St Ann, and St Mary. Through this targeted training, the FAO aims to boost the availability of high-quality, clean pepper seeds and planting materials, addressing a critical need for enhanced productivity and sustainability within the Jamaican hot pepper value chain.

In his remarks at the opening ceremony held on October 28, Franklin Witter, minister of state in the agriculture ministry, highlighted the importance of effective plant breeding strategies.

“By developing improved cultivars, we can achieve increased crop yields, better nutritional quality, and enhanced adaptability to environmental challenges,” said Witter.

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The opening event also featured a stakeholder meeting and panel discussion that examined policy frameworks and opportunities surrounding commercial seed production, geographical indicators, and community seed saving.

Essential training

The training series was led by the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI), whose experts guided participants in refining plant breeding best practices.

Fayaz Shah, manager of science and innovation at CARDI, emphasised the importance of the training.

“We see this training as being very essential in allowing growth and expansion of the Jamaica pepper industry. CARDI traditionally has been a major supplier of hot pepper seeds and technologies throughout the Caribbean, and we are very grateful to FAO and the Ministry of Agriculture for reaching out to CARDI to share our expertise,” he said.

The training’s regional approach included Professor Path Umaharan, plant breeder at the Cocoa Research Institute from Trinidad and Tobago, and Omaira Avila, seed technologist/biotechnologist from CARDI Belize. The trainers provided specialised insights into Caribbean varieties of hot peppers and a range of topics including gene pool diversity, seed policy, as well tools and techniques expertise in plant breeding and biotechnology.

Dionne Clarke Harris, CARDI’s representative in Jamaica, emphasised CARDI’s longstanding role in Jamaica’s hot pepper industry, particularly in pest management and promotion of the West Indies Red pepper.

“CARDI has been very instrumental in the promotion of the West Indies Red which we saw as the industrial pepper to sustain the processing sector of the hot pepper industry such that whatever production of scotch bonnet we got for the fresh market, we would have enough peppers out there to satisfy in a sustainable and consistent way,” said Clarke Harris.

Highlighting the training’s collaborative nature, she added, “This workshop and its objectives to strengthen the breeding capacity of the [Bodles] team was a good opportunity to garner all the expertise and technologies that we know are out there and to evaluate where we are in Jamaica with respect to breeding.”

Alex Sybron, acting senior research director of the Crop Research Unit at Bodles, noted the immediate benefits of the training for his team.

“From this training, we hope to strengthen and put forward a more structured breeding programme. We also learned some new techniques which we will be utilising, especially for improvement of the scotch bonnet pepper,” Sybron said.

Sybron acknowledged the theoretical and practical components, particularly benefiting team members new to plant breeding.

In a move to enhance the efficiency and quality of seed production, the FAO project will provide a gravity separator, seed extractor, and hot water bath to replace the labour-intensive, manual cleaning processes. This upgrade is expected to improve genetic purity and throughout, aligning Jamaica’s hot pepper industry with international compliance standards and benefiting stakeholders across the value chain, including seed producers, farmers, agro-processors, and exporters.

The Improving the Phytosanitary Food Safety and Market Access Opportunities along the Hot Pepper Value Chain project is funded by the Standards and Trade Development Facility and implemented by FAO in collaboration with the Bureau of Standards Jamaica and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Mining.