Tomatoes cooked together with Cabbages have been and still remains a super quick, easy and delicious vegetable side dish dinner for most Kenyans.
One needs a handful of simple ingredients to put it together and can be consumed by all, from meat lovers and also as a dish for vegetarians.
Kenya has over 300 varieties of tomatoes and the Kenya Agricultural Livestock Research Organization (KALRO) is still improving and breeding new ones.
They are currently working on identification of the best irrigation practice for tomato production.
Director of Crop Systems at KALRO Dr. Lusike Wasilwa said production of tomato is critical in a country where each household consumes the vegetable in at least two meals every day.
Wasilwa expressed fears that the over 500,000 tomato farmers in Kenya could not meet the local demand due to poor variety of seeds impacting on low yields, which still stands at 8.8 Metric Tonnes (MT) an acre against a potential of 20MT an acre.
Dr. Wasilwa said the deficit has forced the country to bridge the shortfalls with imports from Tanzania, Uganda, DRC and Ethiopia.
“Production of tomato is largely constrained by high cost of certified seeds, limited skills on seed establishment, pests and diseases, poor post-harvest management practices as well as low technology adoption rate among the small holder farmers who are the majority of producers,” Dr. Wasilwa told KNA.
KALRO had been holding an Open Week Exhibition at all its institutes and centers from February 14th to March 7th, 2025, showcasing research, technologies, and solutions for sustainable agriculture, with a focus on innovation.
During the exhibition, various private companies who have collaborated with KALRO have joined in to showcase some of their innovations.
SAKATA seeds is one such company that had the opportunity to display a very large range of products and showcase the quality and yield of various varieties during the KALRO Kandara farmers’ day last week.
Speaking to KNA, Angus Douglas Hamilton, the regional representative for SAKATA in East Africa said currently they have started a tomato breeding programme specifically for Africa and is developing some varieties in their breeding stations across the world.
Buena Vista, F1, a tomato variety they are promoting for the East African region and West African region with the trial site at KALRO has just been released in Kenya.
“It is an excellent new variety with large fruit. It has disease resistance to tomato spotted wilt virus and tomato yellow leaf curl virus, two of the problems that have been faced by farmers in the Loitokitok region of the country where tomatoes are grown in large scale,” Hamilton said.
He explained that apart from the Buena Vista variety having large-sized fruits, they are very solid and firm thus making them have an excellent shelf life and even get to the market without any damage.
He added that the yield is also extremely high with lots of fruits that are large and this he added is something that the market wants.
“We are very excited to launch this variety into the Kenyan market and looking forward to hearing what the feedback will be from the farmers,” said Hamilton.
Most breeders, he said, are focusing more on climate change with an understanding that they will have to produce fruits that can survive the hotter, drier zones or even wetter, more disease-ridden zones and also come up with solutions for farmers.
“It takes time to breed these varieties. A new tomato may take up to 10 to 12 years to produce. It is extremely difficult for the breeders to produce new varieties fast enough to keep up with the climate change,” he added.
Other important crops that SAKATA is also working on, Hamilton said, are butter nuts and also cabbages.
Butternut is something which is extremely high yielding, very nutritious, and something which I think farmers can rely on more and more,” he said.
In Kenya, the old-fashioned ‘Malenge’ is still on the market, he explained, but nowadays more people are moving towards butternut because they are high yielding, they are tastier and get better storage,
As for the Cabbages, Hamilton talked of a new variety PowerSlam F1, they have also launched in the country specifically for the African region.
There are over 400 different varieties of cabbage grown throughout the world, but the reason why the PowerSlam F1 will be successful, he noted is that it is an extremely uniform, high yielding, fills completely and there are virtually no air gaps whatsoever making the cabbage dense and good for transportation.
The PowerSlam F1 cabbage, he explained, is also tolerant against black rot, which is one of the problems especially that sees cabbages rot on the field.
One of the key things that farmers and brokers are looking for, Hamilton said is a cabbage, which will survive the distance such as from Kakamega all the way through to Mombasa at the back of the track and arrive at the market place intact despite the heat.
Hamilton said for PowerSlam F1 cabbage, when it comes to maturity, it’s faster than the average and matures in around 85 days, or even 80 days, depending on the weather, while in terms of weight on average, it is three to three and some half kilos.
“What is interesting is that we have other varieties of cabbages that will grow to five kilos or eight kilos and others even bigger, but brokers want those that will fit as many as possible in their trucks, thus they want the medium size.
Sakata seeds are renowned globally for their role in breeding new varieties of food crops such as Tomato, Red onions, Cabbages, Butternuts and Chillies that once put out into the environment, they address the challenges of pests and are high yielding, fetching farmers’ good money.
Meanwhile, tomato production is estimated to contribute more than Sh15 billion annually to the Kenya economy, supplying income to the producers and food to the country’s population, while annually the area under cabbage cultivation in Kenya is about 600,000 tons.
By Wangari Ndirangu
