Pumpkin Project Wins 2025 Plantum Impact Prize

This year’s Plantum Impact Prize was awarded to East-West Seed Knowledge Transfer Foundation’s Pumpkin Project!

We are honored by this recognition of our work to elevate pumpkin as a profitable crop for smallholder farmers. Spearheaded by 2019 World Food Prize laureate and East-West Seed founder Simon N. Groot, the Pumpkins in Africa project began in Uganda, and we have now expanded this important initiative to Nigeria and Tanzania.

Plantum is a Dutch trade association for companies breeding, propagating, and cultivating seeds and young plants. The Plantum Impact Prize is awarded annually to an initiative that demonstrates a positive impact on both this sector and society.

Plantum and its members were impressed with the Pumpkin Project’s tangible results: 520 pumpkin demonstration fields established; 14,095 farmers trained in improved pumpkin farming techniques; and a 67% increase in pumpkin production. For thousands of farmers in Uganda, pumpkins have become a source of nutrition, income, and pride.

With this award, Plantum also honored the late Simon N. Groot. His legacy—and his dream of one million hectares of pumpkins in Africa—lives on as the pumpkin initiative he launched continues in Uganda and gains traction in other countries where we work.