Consumer-Driven Pipeline

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Disease resistance. Yield potential. Ease of harvest. These are all important factors that growers take into account when selecting vegetable seed varieties. While these traits are essential in ensuring healthy crops, growers and value chain partners are increasingly focused on what’s needed beyond the farm. From flavor and color to convenience and nutrition, consumer preferences play a critical role in helping create market demand and advance health and nutrition worldwide.

But understanding – or better yet, predicting – consumer liking is no easy task. As part of our Vegetable Seeds approach to innovation, we are going above and beyond to increase our understanding of the drivers of consumer preference to ensure our varieties deliver what people around the world want and need to eat. In doing so, we’re helping growers not only build a healthier business, but a healthier, more well-nourished world.

Data innovation enables our team to dissect the flavor drivers in a tomato or melon, for example,  and predict whether a consumer in different parts of the world might prefer that variety. In doing so, we take what is often subjective – an individual’s preference – and turn it into quantifiable data that helps ensure our varieties have the right recipe for flavor long before they reach the consumer’s plate.

• Predictive Consumer Liking Models 

By leveraging our expertise and deep understanding of consumer preferences at every stage of our pipeline development, we are helping growers maximize their investment in our products by creating more pull from the market, while maintaining the agronomic traits that are essential to ensuring a healthy harvest.

“We are creating pull from the market
to help grow farmers’ businesses and increase vegetable consumption.”

– Martin Ruebelt, Head of Global Consumer R&D