The question is case-specific, which is here in the Philippines. As explained to me, all onion seeds are imported. The biggest distributor is a Dutch company, with similar operations in Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia. I’m pretty sure I got the basic steps in production right:
Salable seeds have a percentage set aside for production. This portion is planted by company horticulturists in greenhouses where they grow, flower, and produce seeds.
The new seeds are not salable to farmers. They are instead desiccated, packed, and flown to a third party in the US (a private farm in northern California.)
US farmers plant the seeds (and I suppose pollinate them upon flowering.) Once they flower and mature, the resulting seeds are salable and are flown back to the Philippines for sale.
So, for a given amount of infertile seeds flown out, several times that amount of salable seeds are flown in. The Philippine operation produces a surplus and these are sold to affiliates in other southeast Asian countries.
Are all my assumptions correct? There is no way we can produce onion seeds locally, at least a similar tropical variety?
Setting aside the confusion over fertile/infertile and other possible issues …
Regarding onion production: most onion type requires certain daylight changes to produce a flower stalk and make seeds. Some need lengthening days, some need shortening days. At the tropics, there isn’t enough daylight variation for these type of varieties to go thru their full cycle. Hence it’s entirely possible that seeds from, e.g., California, are exported to tropical countries which can grow, but not reproduce, those varieties.
Actually, a possible source of confusion: Most onions grown in backyard gardens aren’t grown directly from seeds at all. They’re grown from smaller bulbs. Those might be the things that the OP is talking about being imported.
Those little bulbs (sets) are in turn usually grown from seed though, as opposed to vegetatively divided.
ftg makes a good point about daylength and climate. Another factor that could be at play is F1 hybrid seed - if the varieties being grown are F1 hybrids, saved seed wont breed true.
Also, onions grown for bulbs won’t produce any seed - they are harvested before they get a chance (typically, if they do run to seed prematurely, it will make the bulbs unsuitable for sale)
I’m going to hazard a guess that they are using the Philippines and other Southeast Asian countries as winter nurseries, that is, growing onions in the tropics while conditions are unsuitable in temperate areas. I’ll further hazard another guess that what’s being produced are male sterile lines. The seeds, when planted, are guaranteed to be female only. When sent to California, they will be crossed with other lines to produce F1 hybrid seed. When send them to California? It’s possible that the parental lines are better adapted to the growing conditions there, or they have a better setup for hybrid seed production.
My guess is that it’s a ‘set onion’ business based out of Asia, but they send the seeds here so they can say “GROWN IN THE USA” on the package, even though the majority of the work is down elsewhere.
It certainly wouldn’t be the first time I’ve seen something in the food industry do something like that.
Whew. More complicated than I thought. They fly non-salable seeds to the US and back comes salable. The American farm is just a third party (name is Condor Resources- as American a name as you can have.) Thanks for the replies, dopers!
In some food markets, it is the rule. For example, most every bottle of first cold press extra virgin olive oil “produced in Italy,” the artsy label showing awards and the sunny skies of Tuscany, or wherever, is not olive oil from olives grown in Italy. It is a mix, consistent in taste, within some standard, of oils from every and any damn country in the world, the percentages varying with spot market conditions, ultimately poured into a bottle in Italy.
Which is why the various “controlled origin” laws were created, and their various initials when “made in” refers to the essential conditions of the food.
So the basic answer is that they send seeds to the Philippines,
but the return flow are BULBS.
The bulbs are required in USA, because the seeds won’t have time to produce onions before winter… But bulbs have a head start and do produce onions.
In Phillipines, no problem starting with seeds, the onions will grow all year around, so seeds work just fine and its cheapest to use seeds there…