The Future of Agriculture: How Hybrid Seeds Are Transforming Crop Yields

Hybrid Seeds: Driving Agricultural Innovation and Global Food Security

Hybrid seeds are increasingly popular all over the world because they have a faster maturing time as compared to traditional or Open-Pollinated Variety (OPV) seeds. These seeds originated from controlled cross-pollination of two varieties within the same species of plant, which promotes amplification of qualities with major attributes such as higher yield, uniformity in plants, and better quality, which results in disease resistance. Heirloom Seeds are the seeds that come from open-pollinated plants pollinated by natural mechanisms such as wind, insects, and birds. These seeds will become the parent plant and can reproduce true to form, resulting in a seed with the same characteristics as their parents, but they may have high genetic diversity. They are generally more difficult to grow compared to hybrid seeds, specifically because of their intermediate days. Hybridization techniques are utilized to attain the sustainable development goals of food security and nutrition.

Hybrid seeds give farmers high yields, and fruits can be matured easily by drought resistance, pest resistance, and fast breeding improvement, which supports better agricultural land management. Hybrid seeds provide high-quality seeds combined with tractors and advanced technology, entirely upending how agriculture has always worked and significantly improving farmers’ livelihoods as they started to earn more from their lands. Farmers are also increasing the cultivation area due to the rapid growth of population and are moving towards hybrid seeds to increase production.

Moreover, hybrid seeds are rejuvenating crop yields and altering plant attributes to satisfy the ever-increasing need for global food production. Not only can they provide substantially increased productivity and improved resistance to disease, but they can readily adapt to changing environmental conditions relating to climate change, which ensures food security. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations reported that world agricultural production would need to rise to 14,060 trillion crop calories to feed 9.7 billion people globally by 2050 under medium-population expansion. To remain within the bounds of a higher-population growth scenario, there would be the requirement to be 15,410 trillion crop calories available to feed the equivalent of 10.8 billion people in 2050, which is estimated to be a 61 percent increase in calories compared with 2011 necessities. Thus, with the boom in the global population, the pressure on agricultural systems will continuously get higher, which necessitates increased crop yield, leading to increased utilization of hybrid crops.

Figure 1: Increase in Requirement of Crop Calories Globally Under Different Population Growth Scenarios, in Trillion, in 2050

Source: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

According to the Federation of Seed Industry of India (FSII), the farmer community in the country has benefited significantly due to an increased availability and adoption of improved hybrids, leading to excellent results. Over the past few years, hybrids have become more mainstream, with tomatoes seeing a jump of 40%, brinjal by 82%, cabbage by 68.6%, and okra by 10%. Given this, the government is also stepping in through policy reforms and subsidies for the promotion of hybrid seeds, which has led to increased productivity and profitability for farmers as well as mutual benefits to both consumers and farmers. Further, crop demand is rising as health concerns grow and in response to consumers making healthier dietary shifts by moderately increasing the consumption of fresh fruits, vegetables, and other crops. The future option is hybrid seed crossing for quality and profit in the global agriculture sector.

In addition, there is a growing trend towards the uptake of improved hybrid seeds across much of the developing world because they are faster maturing than traditional seeds. This is leading to a rise in major agri-based companies investing in advancing and developing hybrid seeds. For instance, Ankur Seeds released GMS-based ‘Indian Bean (Dolichos) Hybrids’ known as Dolichos, which is a world-first, to facilitate the stable productivity and yield of vegetables in May 2022. Synthesizing the best of both worlds, the company utilized customized solutions in combination with local biodiversity to develop high-yielding protein-rich Indian bean hybrids. Farmers all over the globe are looking for alternatives towards sustainable agriculture, feeling that hybrid crops are a preventive action on how they can compete in this edge world to secure their survival. Ankur Seeds is developing new and innovative solutions in hybrid crop varieties to assist farmers around the globe.

There are increasing research studies by organizations aimed at better production of hybrid seeds as well as overhauling agriculture. Rising innovation of these varieties by researchers provides direction for smart breeding and recognizing its effective traits. This leads to a reduction of the environmental impact of hybrid seed production by enabling genomic information for predictive analytics. For instance, the ICAR-All India Coordinated Research Project on Pearl Millet identified and recommended 206 hybrids and 66 varieties for cultivation in different agroecological regions of the country. Pearl millet is the lead crop to set global minimum levels of micronutrient content for eligibility in the promotion criteria of crops.

Key Developments:

Year	Development
July 2024	Solynta received approval from Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Service (KEPHIS) to offer three hybrid true potato seed varieties for the country’s commercial production. These varieties are SOLHY007, SOLHY012, and SOLHY015 available as true seeds and cultivars grown from true seeds. They released these varieties from the Netherlands using non-GMO hybrid breeding innovation, which is a new breeding platform developed by Solynta. One of these varieties has various resistant genes for late blight, a potato ailment that damages growers’ harvests.
February 2024	Origin Agritech Ltd. announced the successful introduction of a wild corn gene into one of its elite commercial hybrid products, thus achieving an important scientific first as well as setting standards for crop yield performance and efficiency. This innovative genetic adjustment has progressed plant type and photosynthesis effectiveness, empowering the hybrid to attain higher yields by supporting expanded plant thickness per acre.
October 2023	Rallis India Limited, a leading player in the Indian agri inputs space of Tata enterprise, announced the launch of ‘SeedSure,’ a mobile application that enables effective and efficient monitoring and management of its Hybrid Seed Production (HSP) program. The app aids data acquisition and crop evaluation during seedling, vegetative, flowering, pod formation, and maturity. TCS has developed SeedSure to address the challenges required in managing hybrid seed production that can result in observable crop yield decline or sudden fall in crop yield.