Salinas, California, USA
August 13, 2025
Syngenta Vegetable Seed’s Future of Veg event in Salinas displayed innovations featuring new disease resistance, new varieties, and adaptability for cauliflower, romaine and spinach growers. The event was hosted August 12 –13.
"Our Salinas event brought solutions in lettuce, spinach, and brassica to growers," said Ana Grau, Syngenta Vegetable Seeds Americas Brand and Customer Head. “We’re excited to share these latest solutions and details about our pipeline to help them fill slotting schedules and discover new opportunities.”
International and local visitors talked with experts who work behind the scenes everyday to bring the best varieties to operations worldwide. This inside look showed how our robust trialing program and local knowledge, combined with customer feedback helps drive our innovations to help growers solve problems and address growing challenges.
"What distinguished our team's presentations was their laser focus on our growers' priorities," said Andre Cariou, Syngenta Vegetable Seeds Regional Commercial Head, LATAM and AGH. "We recognize that while disease resistance is critical for romaine and spinach production, cauliflower growers require advanced self-wrapping head characteristics. Regardless of the challenge, our breeding teams consistently develop solutions to anticipate market and customer needs”.
Innovations in dozens of crops were on display, including:
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Cauliflower, featuring Syngenta’s newest variety, Stella, which is adapted to grow specifically in the desert southwest and California central coast areas. Breeders also introduced Lacerta, a top-performing, temperate variety that works well for California overwinter growing and spring slotting — and features key disease resistance.
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In romaine, Syngenta proudly offers a robust portfolio that can fulfill their slotting needs. Growers can depend on Syngenta to provide them not only the seeds, but also with the information needed to complete their slotting schedule. And disease resistance is top-of-mind, for example, Syngenta was among the first to bring INSV resistance to Salinas Valley, in addition to resistance to many other critical diseases in lettuce.
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For spinach, Syngenta offers baby spinach varieties with adaptability and four varieties with full powdery mildew resistance. As a global leader in spinach, research into this important crop is growing and as solutions are discovered around the world, they can be trialed in many locations to see where they might be a fit.
“At Future of Veg, we're not just showcasing products; we're building the roadmap for vegetable production that will feed generations to come,” said Juan Pablo Lopez, Syngenta Vegetable Seeds Regional Commercial Head, North America, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.
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