Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4
Page 5
Page 6
Page 7
Page 8
Page 9
Page 10
Page 11
Page 12
Page 13
Page 14
Page 15
Page 16
Page 17
Page 18
Page 19
Page 20
Page 21
Page 22
Page 23
Page 24
Page 25
Page 26
Page 27
Page 28
Page 29
Page 30
Page 31
Page 32
Page 33
Page 34
Page 35
Page 36
Page 37
Page 38
Page 39
Page 40
Page 41
Page 42
Page 43
Page 44
Page 45
Page 46
Page 47
Page 48
Page 49
Page 50
Page 51
Page 52
Page 53
Page 54
Page 55
Page 56
Page 57
Page 58
Page 59
Page 60
Page 61
Page 62
Page 63
Page 64
Page 65
Page 66
Page 67
Page 68
Page 69
Page 70
Page 71
Page 72
Page 73
Page 74
Page 75
Page 76
Page 77
Page 78
Page 79
Page 80
Page 81
Page 82
Page 83
Page 84
SEPTEMBER 2015 SEEDWORLD.COM 15 says. Everybodys interest is in seed health. Industry has a great stake in that. Putting heads together on best prac- tices also stands to improve just about everyone involved. You find little tidbits that are maybe not as strong as they could be when you go through a quality assurance audit Moore says. Through the auditing process we might pick up areas where were weak. Third its simply expensive to comply with new regulations. If companies are spending all their money on the regulatory side they dont have as much to put into innovation Dunkle says. If we can keep this in the marketplace side if we can keep this in the corporate side innovation will meet the challenges. Finally an accreditation program can be used as a marketing tool that brings other companies into better compliance in terms of seed health. Knowing that seed is clean or at least is certified as having been handled by a company that uses the best management practices available could be a significant factor for a seed buyer. Someone could see that this part of the USDA pilot program here are the results that are part of that program and it could bring an assurance or a peace of mind Perry explains. Dunkle says seed companies are moti- vated to see their competitors fall into line with better management practices. Theres a lot of self-policing thats going on in the industry he says. Companies who are doing the right things see companies who arent as causing risk to them. Going Forward Dunkle says the yearlong pilot will teach all parties involved a lot about how well the accreditation system works. He is also working with a USDA researcher to measure to what degree phytosanitary risks are lowered when using the management practices adopted by the accredited companies. Dunkle says that this will provide scientific evidence of the effectiveness of the industrys ability to monitor itself in these cases. After the initial year Perry says all parties involved will get together again to evaluate the program and adjust- ments might need to be made. The pilot program could become a permanent USDA-APHIS program. Or the whole thing could be scrapped. But no one seems to be pulling for the latter. If successful there is hope that the program could be expanded to account for more diseases or pests and more species. If it does work we could apply this pilot to other diseases and identify opportunities to expand on it but we need to see how this works first shares Perry. Moore is optimistic. Disease pres- sure is not something thats going to stop he says. This sets up a good process to handle any of the diseases that could come in. SW None of us works in a silo. Its in our industrys best interest to share this information. Samantha Thomas