The Super Seeders: How Plant Scientists Are Racing to Protect Global Food Security Amid Climate Change and Disease

The Super Seeders is based on first-hand accounts from the scientists, breeders, and curators who have built the seven pillars of today's plant genetics revolution. It begins with the guardians of global gene banks, conserving the rare and diverse crop genes that form agriculture's safety net. From these collections, plant geneticists are now unlocking hidden traits with fast-moving genome technologies, transforming the possibilities of crop improvement.


International research centres and the groundbreaking Plant Treaty have opened the floodgates for the free exchange of genetic material, enabling a new wave of discovery. Crop breeders are translating these breakthroughs into reality, delivering drought-tolerant, disease-resistant, and higher-yielding varieties for farmers.

The book raises a pressing question: will this revolution reach the 70 percent of Africans who still depend on subsistence farming? The answer will shape not only the future of food in Africa, but the future of food security worldwide.

A story of ingenuity and urgency, The Super Seeders captures the hopes and challenges of the women and men driving a genetic transformation of agriculture—and the farmers whose lives depend on its success.

Miles Hillmann is a lifelong entrepreneur with a career that bridges scientific curiosity and hands-on innovation, from his early work at the Kabanyolo Agricultural Research Station in Uganda during Idi Amin's fall to experiencing food shortage and famine in the Ethiopian Central Highlands. His work encompassed everything from agricultural development to building flash flood irrigation food-for-work systems. His first company developed processes for food industry materials. Concurrently he pioneered real-time organic material analysis. He then created one of the UK's major pollution control companies supplying specialist materials to companies in Europe, Nigeria and the Middle East. This led him to establish companies in e-commerce, accredited pollution control training and flood control.This book is the story of the scientists, curators, and plant breeders leading this movement, told in their voices, through his lens.