“Adapting Sesame to Modern Agriculture”

Gerald De La Fuente,

Wednesday, March 26^th, 2025

Agronomy 3140, 3:00 – 4:00 pm

Description: Sesame is a common ingredient in Asian and Mediterranean cuisine and its popularity is expanding here in the United States and around the world.  Sesame cultivation dates back to at least 2000 BC, and is grown around the world on over 20 million acres. Over 90% of the world’s sesame is hand-harvested. This is primarily due to the fact that most of the world’s sesame shatters at maturity. Sesame would not be an accepted crop in the United States if it had to be harvested by hand. Sesaco’s breeding program, which dates back to the 1940s, developed the world’s first non-shattering varieties of sesame. These varieties can be machine harvested with the same equipment farmers use to harvest other grains. Sesaco is expanding the cultivation of sesame in the United States through continued genetic improvement. Sesame breeding faces several unique challenges that will be addressed in this seminar.  This small-seeded, novel crop is being rapidly adopted by growers as they master its production. Our breeding program is focused on adapting sesame to modern agriculture, while simultaneously ensuring that the final product is fine-tuned to a wide range of customer needs and specifications.

Gerald De La Fuente is a sesame breeder with Sesaco Corporation. He manages testing and evaluation from the Rio Grande Valley of Texas to Southern Kansas. Sesaco has a relatively young breeding program, which has expanded rapidly since 2015. Sesaco operates a fully integrated supply chain from variety development through ingredient sales. Gerald has been with Sesaco since his graduation from Iowa State University in 2015 with a Ph.D. in Plant Breeding. Gerald is also a Texas A&M alumnus with an M.S. in Plant Breeding in 2012 and a B.S. in Plant and Environmental Soil Science in 2010. Sesaco’s breeding program has a rich history dating back 80 years, and holds patents on the development of the worlds first mechanically harvestable sesame varieties. Breeding efforts prior to 2015 were focused primarily on the development of mechanically harvestable varieties of sesame that were acceptable to the grower and the end user. Since 2015, the breeding program has expanded from a single main nursery location to four regional breeding/testing programs which aim to develop locally adapted varieties that also fit the quality factors required by both our production and operations divisions as well as our end users. Moving forward, Sesaco’s R&D team is working towards not only improving yield and other agronomic traits, but also enhancing the quality factors critical to our end users.