26 / SEEDWORLD.COM SEPTEMBER 2018 SOMETIMES GOOD ENOUGH needs to be put in context. Often times, it is best to compare it to something we all can relate to. So, if we defined good enough as 98 percent quality, how does this translate to the common things we all have experienced or can relate to? Let’s start with something simple such as airline flights. There are 34.7 million global airline flights per year. If 98 percent was good enough, 2 percent of flights would have an issue. While 34 million of those flights would occur without any issues, 694,000 flights would have some issue. Which flight would you want to be on? What about the 4 trillion cubic meters of fresh water consumed globally each year? If quality were 98 percent, 80 billion cubic meters of the global consumption of fresh water would have some sort of unacceptable contamination. Lastly, lets consider inpatient surgi- cal procedures. In the U.S. alone, there are 48 million inpatient procedures that occur each year. Staying consistent with the 98 percent quality, 47 million of those would happen without issue. However, near 960,000 of those would have some sort of surgical error. Taking that one step further, I read a recent report that one in four surgical errors are the result of tech- nology issues. This means 240,000 could have been prevented through improve- ment or investment in technology. It might be interesting to consider this implication on our industry. For example, if you are a seed condi- tioner processing 34 million units of soy- beans per year and your factor for quality is 98 percent, 2 percent of the units you process will not meet the quality stand- ards set in place for your customers. If so, you could safely tell your customers that 680,000 units of soybean that you provide does not meet quality standards. What if one of your competitors had a higher quality standard of 99 percent? It Is Good Enough, Really Good Enough? JOE PENTLICKI, OLIVER MANUFACTURING VICE PRESIDENT/COO joe.pentlicki@olivermanufacturing.com • olivermanufacturing.com would still be 340,000 units of soybean that does not meet quality standards. What are you doing to differenti- ate yourself in the market from a quality perspective? Have you done the math to understand the implications of your standards? What are your competitors’ standards for quality? Have you done the math to understand the implications of your competitors’ standards? Are you investing in new systems, processes and technology to keep you at the forefront in your markets? Have you decided if good enough is really good enough? THE DEVELOPMENT OF next genera- tion sequencing technologies and the ongoing reduction of sequencing costs have made genotyping by sequenc- ing (GBS) a valuable approach to find the variants in DNA to identify genetic improvements within plant breeding programs. Having an accurate and cost- effective way of genotyping seed and plant materials is of great value to the seed industry. Targeted GBS technology provides high quality genotyping capabilities at an economical cost per sample to unlock the potential of yield and quality traits hidden in breeding populations. Three GBS Methods • GBS via restriction enzyme. This is the first GBS method developed. Using dif- Discover the Most Economical Genotyping Method In Crop Breeding FARHAD GHAVAMI, EUROFINS BIODIAGNOSTICS CHIEF SCIENCE OFFICER @GhavamiF • FarhadGhavami@eurofinsUS.com | eurofinsus.com/biodiagnostics ferent restriction enzymes, the genome is digested, and only the fragments with certain sizes will be amplified and sequenced. Application: For R&D pro- jects and when there is no information available on the genome. • GBS via sequence capture. The genome is either physically or enzy- matically fragmented into small frag- ments. The targets are then captured by probes attached to beads or arrays and sequenced. Application: It can be used for hundreds to thousands of markers. • GBS via targeted amplification, or amplicon-based sequencing. Hundreds of regions in the genome are ampli- fied using multiplex PCR approach. The PCR fragments are then sequenced. Application: A very cost-effective method for genotyping using 100 to 3,000 markers. This would cover most of the marker-assisted breeding applications including genomic selec- tion, marker-assisted backcrossing and marker-assisted selection for qualitative and quantitative traits all together. The objective of all three meth- ods is to reduce the complexity of the genome to a few hundred or thousand targets. Amplicon-based sequencing is the most cost-effective method of all. By using different sequence barcodes, the amplicons from many samples can be barcoded, pooled and sequenced together to reduce the per-sample cost of sequencing. Amplicon-based sequenc- ing is the best method to address most of the breeding program needs in crops. Eurofins has the capability and capacity to perform all three GBS methods.