The development of special sesame seed variety to be planted in Indonesia

The government of Indonesia through its Ministry of Agriculture is currently cooperating with scientists from Japan to develop a variety of sesame seed that has a higher growth rate than the conventional varieties. The first stage of this development was started early in June 2020 and is still on-going. It is expected that the developed variety would be able to reduce the Indonesian market's heavy dependence to imported sesame seed as this new variety would be able to produce around 2MT/hectare once fully-produced. This variety would also have high adaptability through the abrupt change in weather as it can grow in regions with a heavy rate of rainfall like in the Western Indonesia region or hotter temperature in Central Indonesia. The development is expected to be completed in Early September 2020, so that the early stage of production can be initiated immediately after that.