JANUARY 2018 SEEDWORLD.COM / 45 SEED TREATMENTS are more than simply insecticides and fungicides. They include sundry items like colorants, polymers, and biological enhancements and are more than just than a pretty face. They carry a premium message, provide stewardship and ultimately performance. Color and Polymers Color is important. With your premium seed there needs to be a premium image. Color, color intensity and shine are all important to a premium image as they allow you to go beyond the simple red, blue or green and create an image that can differentiate your products. Beyond color are polymers. There are a number of considerations for using pol- ymers. First, polymers help in the treating plants as well as in planting. The proper polymer helps throughput the seed treat- ing operation by reducing bridging. With the precision planters that allow farmers to watch seed drop, there must be good flow and polymers allow seed producers to obtain smooth seed flow through farm- ers’ planters. From a human and environmental standpoint, polymers reduce dust and keep it on the seed which reduces envi- ronmental and human exposure. This is especially important with neonicotinoid- treated seed and the pollinator issues. Biological Enhancements The category of biological enhancements includes everything from the rhizobia for root nodulation to growth regulators that accompany the seed treatment. These products are for everything from nitro- gen fixation to metabolic regulation and can be biological organisms, biological Seed Treatment and Stewardship TOM KROLL TECHNICAL AND PRODUCT MANAGER tom.kroll@nufarm.com • nufarm.com extracts or chemicals, including pop-up fertilizers and micro nutrients. Obviously, there is a long list of prod- ucts that suggest there is more to seed treatments than just insecticides and fungicides. The take-away from this is to consider color and shine and find the right fit that addresses your premium seed offerings. Consider polymers for several reasons. First and last, it is the responsible thing to do to reduce human and environmental exposure. And consider which of the available seed enhancers can help you produce the best seeds for your geography and differentiate your products. Why not make your seed look its best while using seed enhancements to address customer needs, improve yield and set yourself apart from your competition? BELIEVE IT OR NOT, but there are seed companies where the seed multi- plication, sales and marketing staff use expensive and very current software while the breeders in the same company are still primarily using spreadsheets. Think about it – the breeders who develop the hybrids and varieties that determine the rest of the “revenue pipe- line” on which the company depends for its future, use the simplest of software tools. I know – I have visited seed com- panies in 2017 and earlier where this is still true. Does not this picture seem a bit strange or incongruent? What causes and even perpetuates such a bottleneck for a seed company? It is not that senior management is unappreciative of the value of data analy- sis. They make significant investments in sophisticated systems to help them manage logistics and distribution because they understand the complexity of the decision making process and know the cost of making an ill-advised decision. It is also quite tangible – xx bags shipped on time, yy revenue in sales and zz in inventory with profit computed to the cent. Plant breeders also collect big data that requires a com- prehensive and well structured database with sophisticated analysis – but that might at first glance seem less tangible. To transform the large amount of plant breeding data into actionable infor- mation requires advanced experimental designs, spatial analyses of yield trials plus other advanced statistical analyses and specific decision tools all in a power- ful relational database – well beyond the capability of spreadsheets. But all too often, these are the tools plant breeders are expected to use because top senior administrators are unaware or unappre- ciative of the specific software systems available to help create and advance new more superior hybrids and varieties through the product pipeline. Some plant breeders have a challenge when communicating with their senior officials. For the good of the company, they have an obligation to explain that data management and analysis are as vital to advancing new selections as other software is for increasing the com- pany’s marketing productivity and finan- cial efficiency. It is as necessary – maybe even more so – for a plant breeder to advance beyond using spreadsheets as it is for say a CFO to invest in a unified accounting software package. The CFO would no doubt consider that an invest- ment, not an expense, why not the same for the breeder? Use the Right Tools for the Task or Lose a Million Dollars DIETER MULITZE AGRONOMIX PRESIDENT, CEO AND FOUNDER @Agronomix • mulitze@agronomix.com • agronomix.com