▲ Gyeongwon Jeongmeo / CEO Gwon Chul-sang

(PowerKorea) Better seeds and seedlings affect greatly the quality of crops. South Korea’s seedling industry has grown steadily and industry experts predict the market will grow to be around 500 billion won ($449 million) in 5 years as the volume of export also is on the rise. 

Gyeongwon Jeongmeo (seedling) is a South Korean seed company. CEO Gwon Chul-sang has devoted decades of his life to finding, studying and developing seeds by traveling around the world. He settled in his home town Uiryeong County 20 years ago and has carried on his development of high grade seeds including melon, tomato and cucumber with endless passion.

“Melon has become one of the most typical agricultural products in the county. For many years, melon farmers in the region were aggravated by powdery mildew and fungal disease that ruined around 20% of their melons in times of harvest. So I started development of new melon seeds for them” says Gwon.

So far, Gwon has developed 15 kinds of melon seeds including hanuri and chunchukae. Also developed and being supplied nationwide are 5 kinds of tomato seeds and 5 kinds of cucumber seeds. The melon seeds he developed are cultivated throughout the year and earl’s green in particular is cladding cultivation-friendly which has strong root and thick net and is high in sugar and powdery mildew-resistance. 

The cladding cultivation also hangs two melons per stem and is easy to manage temperature when compared to staking cultivation. The cladding cultivation is deep in leaf color, short in leafstalk and the leaves are erect and small or medium in size, and the fruits are similar to sweet potato in shape with around 2kg in weight and average 17Brix in sugar content. 

“There’s a saying that seedling is the half the farming. In other words, using strong and quality seeds let farmers grow more competitive crops. So I feel a great sense of duty to research and develop better seeds and seeding methods for them.”

Gwon continues “Seedling industry needs a steady flow of investment as a research, for example, can see its results after 10 to 15 years. China’s seed industry is 12 times bigger than us and so is the government subsidy. Regretfully, I think there are still many outdated regulations in South Korea which play rather negatively in the way for Korean seed companies to grow competitiveness in the global market. So I hope the government would listen more to experts in the field and bring up necessary measures.”

Gyeongwon Jeongmeo received $100,000 Export Tower and the seeds are being exported to China, Vietnam and Japan.

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