History

Hildesheim research farm has historically been the’ home’ research farm of Pannar Seed for the last six decades. In my opinion, it was the cornerstone to the early success of the Pannar breeding programmes. In combination with a site in the dry North West (Klerksdorp) and a site in the cool East (Delmas), it was successfully used to identify commercial cultivars for the whole of the summer rainfall production region of the country. Hildesheim has been the home of champion maize hybrids, soybean cultivars and dry bean varieties that have had a huge impact on agriculture in South Africa, and indeed across the African continent.

The Pannar brand established Hildesheim as their home research station, gradually adding offices, workrooms, seed stores, cold rooms, greenhouses and laboratory facilities. Many of the legends of plant breeding in South Africa, have spent at least some part of their careers working on Hildesheim. So, in a sense, it has also been a home to many champions of the South African seed business too.

After 67 successful years in Greytown, the Pannar Brand has relocated to Pietermaritzburg, and the campus has been sold to a local Greytown family business. Podsquad has been very fortunate to lease some of the facilities that have been so key to the historical success of agricultural research in Greytown.

Laboratory

The laboratory facility on Hildesheim was opened in 2005, at the start of the Biotech era. It was really just a 3-bedroom farm-manager’s home that was re-purposed as a laboratory, and as time went on, it was upgraded into a world-class facility which included laboratory workrooms, growth rooms, a cold room and four green houses. In 2023, Podsquad started leasing this facility, and the Plant Protection Hub division was formed. The lease of the laboratory has been extended with the new owners of the property, so Hildesheim will continue to be the home of our tissue culture lab for years to come. When PPH started, we envisioned that it would be a general-purpose lab, however, we have very quickly landed up specialising in tissue culture. With the assistance of SASRI, sugarcane tissue culture has become our speciality.

 

Research farm

The research farm is a securely fenced facility, with neatly contoured fields and waterways. The full extent of the farm is 21ha. Podsquad has secured the lease of a 12ha portion of the farm for plant breeding and general agricultural research. Along with the research farm fields, we also lease shed and workroom space.

The heritage Pannar dry bean breeding programme was bought by AGT Foods Africa in 2024 and is being managed on contract by Podsquad (within a division we call the Plant Improvement Collective). The dry bean breeding programme was started on Hildesheim in 1986 and was hosted here for 37 years. It spent 2 years in ‘exile’ during the ownership transition from Pannar to AGT, but thanks to our new lease, it is now back on Hildesheim. Not all cultivars that are developed become commercial varieties, but 42 dry bean varieties have their origins on Hildesheim. It is truly the farm beans call ‘home’.