New Crop Evaluation

During the USAID-funded Hort CRSP Exploratory Survey that took place in two village clusters in northern Thailand, and another in southwest Cambodia, earlier this year, we came across quite a few interesting crop varieties (mainly vegetables) grown by farm families. The ECHO Asia Seed Bank team selected several of these varieties, such as this black seed, short-pod velvet bean, to evaluate. Our criteria was to focus on crops/varieties that are desirable, rare and/or have reported outstanding traits, such as high productivity and good flavor. Many of these finds have already been planted out in the seed bank plots with data and observations currently being recorded.

Hopefully, this effort will yield more regionally appropriate crops for the ECHO Asia Seed Bank to distribute among our network.