BREEDING BETTER with FORWARD
BREEDING BETTER fruit starts with understanding what consumers will love, alongside what growers can grow and bring to market. It is about targeting the right traits and validating decisions throughout the innovation process.
Mini seedless avocados on display at Asia Fruit Logistica 2026:
With consumer validation, we maximize chances of success and deliver the ammunition growers and marketers need to engage retailers and meet consumer demands.
I had the great pleasure of spending the past 2 weeks engaging with clients and partners across Asia as well as at @AFL, discussing FORWARD strategic insights and research services on INNOVATION and BRANDING.
A recurrent theme has been around BREEDING BETTER varieties. Varieties that deliver sustainable futures to growers, marketers and consumers, in the context of changing consumer demand drivers, rising costs of living, climate change, demographic shifts and more!
Varietal proliferation in berries has transformed consumer experience:
Breeding programs are often measured by yield, disease resistance, storage performance, and productivity. These factors matter, but they don’t determine long-term commercial success.
Consumers do.
A breeding program can take 10+ years from initial cross to commercial launch. That’s too long to make decisions without continuously validating what consumers value most. Sensory science and consumer insight help breeders focus on the attributes that drive preference: flavor, sweetness, texture, aroma, juiciness, and, crucially, consistency across seasons and growing locations.
The story of Zespri SunGold™ kiwifruit is a powerful example.
Many see SunGold as the fortunate variety that arrived just as the Psa crisis hit New Zealand’s kiwifruit industry. In reality, it had already been selected, consumer-tested across numerous seasons, and entered pre-commercial trials because of its superior eating quality and strong consumer appeal before Psa emerged. When Hort16A failed, SunGold’s greater tolerance let it be rapidly commercialized as the replacement. In other words, it was ready to go at the right time!
Its success wasn’t luck. It resulted from combining genetics, breeding expertise, sensory validation, and consumer understanding over many years.
The lesson is simple: treat consumer sensory preference as a crucial breeding trait, not a marketing outcome. Moreover, consumer preference should be targeted early in breeding and tested throughout the innovation pipeline to improve how and where the variety is grown; crucially, it should also inform the positioning proposition and commercialization strategy.
At FORWARD, we have developed bespoke methodologies for the produce sector that effectively enable better decision-making across:
- Breeding traits and targets development
- Early-stage selection & likelihood of success assessments
- Clonal stage trials screening and commercial benchmarking
- Pre-commercialization optimization
- Commercialization and launch
Get in touch to learn how FORWARD can help you BREED BETTER!
#ConsumerInsights #SensoryScience #PlantBreeding #FreshProduce #Zespri #Innovation #FoodInnovation #ConsumerCentricity
