The Vital Vegetables Program is a trans-Tasman collaborative research and development joint venture charged with developing and commercialising new high-value, health-promoting vegetables for the Australian and New Zealand horticulture industries. At its inception, the philosophy of Vital Vegetables was to provide a research, germplasm and marketing framework to enable Australian and New Zealand vegetable growers to move their industry towards differentiated, higher-value products that delivered enhanced health benefits to consumers. This shift in thinking was in part driven by recognition of the growing strength of low-wage economies in the international vegetable market, reducing the viability of commodity vegetable production in Australia and New Zealand coupled with the desire to grow profitability of the local vegetable industry. Addressing this trend remains a priority for both the Australian and New Zealand vegetable industries. vitalvegetables� products have been developed for their naturally high nutrient levels, great taste, flavour and long shelf life. To achieve this, the project first established research principles and analytical methods that supported production of high-health vegetables. Each step of production from seed selection, agronomy, harvesting, processing, packaging to distribution was investigated and optimised to ensure consistent year-round quality of vitalvegetables products. The outcome of Vital Vegetables 2 (VV2) is a mechanism and proof of concept that supports the commercialisation and marketing of differentiated vegetable products in the global market. The ultimate goal of this program is to increase vegetable consumption by providing consumers with a series of new health benefit value propositions. Each product contains naturally high levels of nutrients known to be good for health, and each serve contains at least 25% of the suggested daily intake of antioxidants.