The Tower Hamlets team report on their work with Tozer Seeds exploring how to grow Bangladeshi veg in the UK
How our Collaboration Came About
We have been working closely with sustainable food co-ops in Tower Hamlets: St Hilda’s East Food Co-op, Limehouse Town Hall and Leaders in Community; as part of our research into organic vegetables. As a result of this research, we wanted to find a way of giving readily available access to organic Bangladeshi cultural vegetables in a cost effective and sustainable way. With this in mind, we were introduced to project partner, Tozer Seeds by Professor Carol Wagstaff from Reading University and lead on the FoodSEqual research.
We were interested to see whether it would be viable for Tozer Seeds to develop seeds that could be used to grow Bangladeshi cultural vegetables in the UK climate. After an initial online meeting with Jamie Claxton, Director of Research and Development and Matthew Walker, Group Research and Development Manager, they came to visit us in Tower Hamlets in March to look at the cultural vegetables on sale at Whitechapel Market. Shazna showed Jamie and Matthew the seeds available in the shops that had come from Bangladesh and explained how ‘people usually buy these seeds and try to grow them in the UK either in pots on their window sill, on their balcony, in their garden or even in an allotment or food growing box.’ Several varieties were bought to be tested and germinated.
How the Seeds were Collected
Jamie asked us if we could get some seeds from local growers and send them to Tozer Seeds to carry out trials, we had to do this quite soon before the planting season was over.
Sajna went to the community gardener on her estate for seeds but found this to be more of a challenge that was hoped: ‘Unfortunately I was not in luck as the women had said that the seeds that they sowed this year weren’t doing well because of the weather. The little seed supply they had would be saved for next year just in case they didn’t manage to grow anything this year. It was quite sad that their vegetable plants weren’t doing well and many of the women were feeling very disheartened. They mentioned that this will now cause them to buy plants from the local shops and plant them.’
Shazna approached a group of women gardeners in Jubilee Street Gardens, Stepney and told them about our project and asked if they’d be able to supply us with some seeds. The following day they provided us with seeds for ridge gourd, Malabar gourd, bitter gourd, pumpkin, white yard long bean, Bangladeshi cucumber, orol pigeon peas, holifa (sour Bangladeshi spinach), poi shak (spinach leaves) and uri (a type of Bangladeshi bean).
Teams Meeting, June
Jamie and Matthew showed us photographs of the development and growth of our seeds and talked us through the process. They carried out a high-level germination testing process to find uniform seeds and to check plant health. Sajna describes how it was ‘interesting to see the seeds at different stages of growth and I felt really excited to go and see them soon. There were a few that didn’t grow as well as they’d thought.’ Shazna mentioned that ‘The photo of the amaranth was interesting, some were very healthy. One in particular caught my eye as it was very vibrant in colour. I was thinking, Why don’t mine grow looking like this? Is it because of the soil, or the temperature, or the pollination process?’.
For the next step we were invited to visit Tozer Seeds’ base in Cobham, Surrey.
The Visit
On the 9th July, community researchers, Sajna Miah and Shazna Hussain, from Tower Hamlets; Julie Yip and Zoe Miles from Wen; Elaine Swan and Julia Kidd from the University of Sussex; and Martin Chadwick from Reading University visited Tozer Seeds’ Head Office in Cobham, Surrey.
Founded in 1944 during World War II, a time when the nation was cut off from international food suppliers, Tozer supplied seeds to the market gardens in the area around Heathrow. Named after its founder, Arthur Tozer, the company was continued after his death by Tozer’s plant breeder, geneticist Dermot Dawson, and passed down through the Dawson family. Today, Tozer supply seeds to commercial seed producers and commercial growers that supply supermarkets. Over the years they have grown from a local supplier to an international business that carries out product development from bases in the Netherlands, Spain and the US.
After an introduction to the company history and operations in the present day, we were given a tour of the grounds, visiting the sites for each stage of our seeds’ journey through the Tozer seed development process.
The Tour
A large part of their work is about producing seeds that are resilient: able to cope with the particular weather conditions of the growing environment, resistant to disease and quick growing. This involves a process of testing, selection and growing several generations of plant out in the fields until the best strains of the plants are producing seeds that are commercially viable.
The process for our seeds began in the Germination Lab where they carry out the seed quality tests. After this, the selected seeds were grown in the greenhouses and polytunnels and the young plants then transferred to the beds outside. Whilst their work on other vegetables might require the use of the Growth Rooms (a controlled environment that means optimal conditions all year round) for the purpose of our trials, growing outside means they will be more resilient because they are used to more varied weather conditions.
As we were shown around the site, there was a striking mix of the old and the new, of traditional practices working side by side with state-of-the-art technology: employees collecting seeds from plants by hand and sorting into envelopes in a barn equipped with sieves and scales, adjacent to high tech laboratories with lab assistants utilizing the latest in gene editing technology surrounded by petri dishes and microscopes.
What most excited us of course, was seeing the results of the trials of the seeds that Shazna had so resourcefully obtained from the women working in the Jubilee St Gardens. Shazna notes that ‘We were shown the amaranth that had grown. It was quite fascinating to see. The quality of it was wonderful and the colours were so vivid. Overall, they were looking very healthy, and they were well looked after and free from bugs and pests.’
The Project
Initially a supplier to local market gardens, this project could potentially take Tozer back to its origins – if the trial is a success, it could see them supplying local farms with Bangladeshi seeds that are resilient to our weather conditions.
It has been hugely gratifying to see how FoodSEqual research and an interaction with local community gardeners, has led to important trials in the UK of Bangladeshi cultural vegetable seeds and even more exciting, perhaps some real innovation and positive change for the residents of Tower Hamlets.
