Hackney is product and research development manager for Pickseed Canada Inc.
Most farmers believe that the quality of certified seed makes it worth buying. They recognize the blue certified tag and they appreciate the value they are getting in the seed bag.
But according to a survey commissioned by the Canadian Plant Technology Agency, there are still some who don’t see the value of certified relative to common seed.
About 15 years ago, Harvey Wright of the Ontario agriculture ministry and the University of Guelph, now retired, spent a lot of time with growers explaining the benefits of the blue tag – certified seed. I’m thinking of an article by Wright where he was answering the question, “is it worthwhile purchasing and planting a named variety of forage or will my results be just as good with non-variety seed (common seed)?”
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Wright was a well-respected forage specialist. He could have been talking about wheat, canola, timothy, corn or soybeans, because the issues are the same in all crops. He worked in Ontario, but could have been talking about any province in the country. The points he raised then are still valid.
Certified seed is all about putting improved varieties into the hands of farmers. Whether it’s corn, alfalfa, soybeans or cereals, plant breeders in the public and the private sectors are constantly making genetic improvements and bringing out new varieties or hybrids.
The new biotechnologies (Liberty Link, YieldGard and Roundup Ready) are all delivered through certified seed as well. Once the new variety is ready to be advanced to commercial reality, it is put in the hands of expert seed growers for multiplication.
Canadian pedigreed seed production is managed by the Canadian Seed Growers’ Association, an organization of farmers specialized in seed production. These seed growers have the responsibility to produce high quality seed that is genetically pure, and meets the CSGA standards for seed purity and germination.
The only way to purchase a variety is when you buy certified seed, and when you do that, you are buying definite characteristics of disease resistance, crop quality and yield potential.
You can find registration and post-registration performance data on a named variety. To quote Wright, “if the variety performs very well on your farm, you can purchase exactly the same characteristics and adaptability another year by simply buying the same variety. If you purchase common seed, you know nothing about the characteristics you might expect. And if the seed produces a crop that performs well, you have no way of purchasing seed next year that will give you the same performance.”
A variety is sold by variety name and only varieties registered by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency can be sold by variety name.
When you buy certified, you buy a performance guarantee because you are buying a specific variety. You also are paying for the expertise and skill of the seed grower who produced the seed crop to high standards of purity.
That grower manages a complex rotation scheme to ensure no contamination from previous crops. He walks his fields, inspecting the crop and removing off-type plants. His combine is cleaned before harvest.
Included in the cost of seed is inspection by an experienced field inspector working for the CFIA who verifies genetic purity and makes sure the required field isolation is provided, that the crop rotation scheme is appropriate to eliminate the possibility of contamination, and that weed control is effective.
The raw seed is then cleaned, treated, bagged and stored by the seed company. You are paying for performance and reliability with certified seed.
While certified seed has verifiable performance and reliability, common seed does not. You pay less for it because you are getting less.
You don’t know what genetic background you are buying and you don’t know if it is adapted to your conditions, has the disease resistance you want or the quality characteristics you need.
Not only that, but there has been no field inspection during seed production. You only know that it meets the lower purity and germination standards allowed compared to certified. Brands are not varieties; they are common seed too.
Not all certified seed varieties are protected under Plant Breeder’s Rights legislation. Pedigreed seed and PBR protection are different sets of regulations designed to do different things.
Pedigreed seed is seed of an identifiable, named and registered variety that has undergone controlled seed production, inspection and cleaning to ensure varietal integrity, purity and germination.
PBR can be optionally applied to a variety to obtain protection for the intellectual property, whether it is developed in the public or the private sector. What PBR really boils down to is saying, “this variety was bred and developed by Breeder ‘X’, it belongs to them, and they are the only ones allowed to sell it.”
All PBR seed will of course be sold as pedigreed seed because it is all sold as a specific named and registered variety.
You may find that using your bin run seed is the right choice in some circumstances and that is fine. There is nothing to prevent you from doing that.
But you can’t sell common seed by saying “it was grown from variety Y.” That means there is no guarantee that what you buy is what you are told you are getting, beyond general claims. The reality is that you lose more in production, quality or performance than you save by buying common.
Let me use an example from forage production, cited by Harvey Wright where he takes the example of a forage grower with a yield of five tons per acre on 25 acres. Let’s take an example of a yield advantage of 10 percent. A 10 percent yield advantage means this grower is producing an extra 500 bales of hay from that field. Could you afford not to buy certified?
