To help meet the world's growing demand for food and nutrition and to improve the productivity of smallholder farmers, East-West Seed focuses on variety development of tropical vegetables.

Our aim is to produce new, improved varieties with better yield, ability to thrive in changing conditions, and traits that are attractive to vegetable consumers. We take advantage of modern plant breeding technologies to develop better vegetable crops.

Over the years, we have developed some outstanding products that hit a homerun among farmers and consumers, and in many ways, transformed the market.

The Groot family from left to right: Jan, Ard, Simon, Koen, Maaike and Rutger.

The company is privately owned, founded in 1982 by Simon Groot, a 6th generation seedsman from the Netherlands. It is governed by the Supervisory Board, a small group of shareholders composed of members of the Groot family as well as non-family members. The Supervisory Board meets three times a year to discuss the strategy and performance of the company and its holdings.

Over the past 10 years East-West Seed has moved from a loosely connected group of local companies with various shareholdings, to one Group with one ownership structure. The East-West Seed Group is managed by a three-man Board of Management composed of the President, Senior Vice President, and Vice President for R&D.

The Board of Management meets every month and is responsible for day-to-day operations and the budget. Group-wide Functional Management has been put in place in our core functions: R&D, Sales, and Seed Operations. Individual companies under the Group are run by a fully local management team, led by the General Manager and the management committee of each country/organization.

Top (L-R) - Simon Jan De Hoop, Douwe Zijp (Vice Chairman), Simon Groot (Honorary Chairman & Founder), James Amatavivadhana, Michel Devarrewaere

Middle (L-R) - Ard Groot (Chairman), Ivan Chung, Joost Pekelharing, Rutger Groot

Bottom (L-R) - Juan Santos, Bert van der Feltz, Dietrich Schmidt

EWS believes in the complementarity of the formal and informal seed sector. In the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, India, Vietnam, Myanmar and Tanzania, EWS has a pool of smallholder farmers who participate in variety evaluation and selection. They are given training on good agronomic practices, pest and disease management, recording and trial management.