Milestone Reached in Anloga: Ghana Seed Partnership (GSP) Advances Commercial Seedling Production Framework

A major operational milestone was achieved in Anloga a few days ago under the “Work Package 2: Commercial Seedling Production” framework of the GSP project. High-quality vegetable seedlings were successfully produced, and official progress pictures were captured to document this early success.

The activities are being closely managed on the ground through a collaboration between Truvalu and Simba, leveraging their expertise in horticulture technology to oversee nursery operations and implementation standards.

Addressing Structural Bottlenecks in Horticulture

The Ghana Seed Partnership is being implemented by a team of partner organizations under a public-private sector approach. It is managed by GNBCC and Advance Consulting, with support from the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It aims to strengthen Ghana’s horticultural seed sector by fostering innovation, improving quality standards, and enhancing collaboration between public and private sector stakeholders.

The partnership brings together key actors including Truvalu, Simba, Enza Zaden, Bakker Brothers, IWAD, Profyta, East-West Seed, Rijk Zwaan, Wageningen University and Research (WUR), SeedNL, Advance Consulting, and GNBCC.

Currently, the broader vegetable sector faces low productivity due to a critical constraint: an inadequate and unreliable supply of quality seeds. Approximately 80% of Ghanaian growers rely on self-grown or informal seedling sources. These traditional methods frequently lead to uneven germination, pest infestations, and weak plant vigor.

The Vision of Work Package 2

Work Package 2 (WP2) directly targets these productivity gaps by introducing professional, commercial vegetable seedling nurseries. The broader three-year objective of WP2 is to research, pilot, establish, and operationalize Ghana’s first professional 1,000 m² commercial vegetable seedling nursery.

By shifting farmers toward professionally managed nurseries, the project provides disease-free, high-quality, and uniform seedlings. These inputs drastically enhance a crop’s resilience against heat stress, pests, and diseases while driving up overall farm yields.

The core implementing partners leading these year-one efforts are Truvalu and Simba. They are supported by a consortium of Dutch seed experts, including Enza Zaden, Bakker Brothers, Profyta, and Zasco.

A Foundation Built on Training and Piloting

The successful seedling production in Anloga builds directly upon the project’s low-tech pilot phase, which utilizes a shade net nursery designed to validate the market and serve an initial group of 50 farmers. This practical step allows the management team to test regional assumptions, refine the commercial nursery business model, and gather real-life insights directly from Ghanaian growers.

Moving forward, the infrastructure and protocols managed during this pilot will serve as a foundational blueprint. Over its full duration, Work Package 2 will utilize these commercial nurseries as hubs of innovation to build the capacity of more than 500 growers and 5 regional agricultural colleges on professional seedling production and modern cultivation techniques.