The new techniques continue to make the testing more reliable and more efficient, but without internationally accepted standards, none of these technologies will serve the industry when it comes to the politics of seed trade! Science and good techniques do not always drive the evolution of seed testing—governmental policies and consumer fears (especially in the case of advantageous traits) often play a role.

In regards to new technologies available for seed quality testing, both genetic quality and seed health testing have driven technology changes in seed testing. Two highly sensitive and specific technologies that we see being used more and more in seed health testing as well as genetic quality testing are ELISA, a serological test and polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a DNA test. For genetic quality tests, ELISA uses specific antibodies to detect protein products resulting from an inserted gene and in seed health testing; the specific antibody detects a targeted plant pathogen protein. PCR is used to increase specific DNA fragments of either the inserted gene in genetic quality testing or specific pathogen DNA in seed health testing. Both of these techniques are very efficient and used in our programs.