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JUNE 2016 SEEDWORLD.COM 33 SEED QUALITY TESTING The Need to Know Whats In a Seed Since its commercialization biotechnology has been widely adopted which has led to the need to really understand what technology is or is not present in seed. The presence of unintended biotech material in seed is known as adventitious presence AP and companies test to ensure that the seed they are selling or buying is what they think it is. Countries too will test for AP to detect if a trait or event that has not been approved is present. Its not just a companys or a countrys reputation thats on the line. A mislabeled product or grain shipment containing an unapproved trait can lead to rejected shipments and even lead to the loss of market access ultimately hurting our customers. At Eurofins we help seed companies practice good stewardship by providing accurate and reliable testing services to verify seed quality. Eurofins licenses all detection methods from the biotech companies and is able to provide event-specific methods for EUROFINS BIODIAGNOSTICS VICE PRESIDENT OF OPERATIONS DeniseThiedeEurofinsUS.com EurofinsUS.combiodiagnostics DENISE THIEDE all commercial products. These detection methods for AP testing use Polymerase Chain Reaction or PCR-based technology to detect a specific event. Eurofins offers services for domestic and international seed producers. A pooled-seed or semi-quantitative approach is used to estimate whole seed contamination. For example an inbred supplier can confirm that their lines are free of any unintended events using this approach. This verification ensures that the hybrid seed producer will not have any contaminants coming in from the parent lines. Non-GMO seed producers can use this approach to make sure that their seed is free of any biotechnology products. Additionally AP testing can ensure that the refuge component of a Refuge-in-a-Bag product is free of any insect resistance events. In other words this testing ensures that the quality of the product is going to meet the customers expectations for a specific market. PCR technology also provides consistency in method determination when shipping large amounts of seed internationally designed for low-level presence of biotech seed within non-GM shipments. Stringent testing protocols such as this ensure that seed companies are not bringing in any unintended events. Its important to know whats in the seed and to use accredited and regulated Eurofins technology because the entire value chain can be impacted around the world. SOFTWARE DATA MANAGEMENT Are You Losing 2.5 Weeks of Work We all know that plant breeding is a numbers game. Twenty years ago a plant breeder would make as many crosses as possible from hundreds to even thousands. As more crosses were made so did the odds for suc- cess. While that notion still holds true breed- ers are limited or empowered by their ability to work with these numbers or data points. Too often I see plant breedersstillworking in Excel or custom built programs that are outdated hard to manipulate limiting and inefficient. For instance consider a breeder in the field recording data. Think about how many times he or she may hit the Enter or Tab key to move data columns. Lets say you have 100 plants with 10 measurable character- istics such as plant height and width number of leaves leaf angle leaf rolling and so on. It could easily be a 1000 times a day when a breeder is phenotyping plants in a nursery or plot. That 1000 times a day equates to 16 minutes a day or eight hours per month or 2.5 work weeks throughout the course of a year just spent on hitting Enter. AGRONOMIX PRESIDENT CEO AND FOUNDER MulitzeAgronomix.com Agronomix.com DIETER MULITZE Whatifthecursorautomaticallymovedfrom field to field during the data entry process Your breeder just gained an additional 2.5 weeks of their time back. Its the little things that add up. As a former breeder I knew there was a need for software specifically designed for the task at hand no matter the type of crop. So it seemed natural to create a plant breeding software company that could adapt to the specific needs of the industry be it breeders working for small- and medium-sized independent companies multinationals universities and governmental organizations. Todays software is made for the breeder and allows them to take photos that coincide with observations record measurements in the field and auto upload to a server and access data from other internal breeding stations around the world as needed. If you or your breeders are still using pen and paper Excel or an older custom-built program I encourage you to explore the plant breeding software thats available today. If youre wor- ried about learning a new program there are plenty of resources to help. While different companies offer different programs and levels of services there are onboarding programs site visits and further customizations available. Remember Data is just data unless you can use it and extract information then it has meaning.