26 / SEEDWORLD.COM INTERNATIONAL EDITION 2026 He says this is why extensive germplasm collections are so valuable. “At the end of the day, we did not select Kitale because it had certain characteristics that we already knew about and that we wanted to bring into our germplasm. It was kind of chance to find it in our germplasm bank,” Bohn says. While the UIUC collection had what Mujjabi was looking for, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Mexico houses more than 28,000 unique maize seed samples and 150,000 more of wheat. The USDA is also an important resource that breeders rely on. Bohn stresses the importance of a global mindset. “If CIMMYT didn’t take on the germplasm collection work that it’s doing from Latin America, Africa and Asia, all of our germ plasm would essentially be in the hands of a few big companies and not available for public research and that would be a shame,” Bohn says. Turning Struggle into Strategy Specifically, Mujjabi and the research team at UIUC hope to breed corn with a faster-closing canopy to quickly shade out weeds — an issue both in African and for organic farmers in the Midwest. “I'm always puzzled by subsistence farmers in Africa who spend up to 80% of their time on their knees weeding, and I thought, perhaps these varieties might have some contributions to controlling weeds in organic production,” Bohn says. Selecting for multiple stresses is also becoming more impor tant. “Doing genetic tests to understand what genes are involved in conferring resistance or resilience characteristics to the plant, is important and you cannot do that if you don’t have access to these repositories, or libraries of genetic information,” Ugarte says. Many breeders have hung high hopes on this process of dig ging into the past for future innovation. “We have to increase the overall tolerance of these varieties to drought, pests, low light, heat, nitrogen availability and other stresses and we hope that Kitale and others, will contribute to that,” Bohn says. Taste Still Wins – Even in the Lab Ugarte says that while many researchers, including themselves, work with yellow dent corn, Kitale has allowed them to explore new possibilities and serve other markets. “Working with Kitale helps us expand the range of varieties that can be developed for production in organic agriculture,” Ugarte says. And ultimately, it’s about offering farmers and consumers what they actually want, not just what they need. Mujjabi says that while many biofortification projects are working to improve nutritional value, consumers are still going to have specific preferences. The Kasoli Party was a “taste of home: for local African diaspora community members. Jeffrey Block, Gro Alliance, LLC organic seed division manager.
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