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Darrell Maddox
- President - STA Laboratories - USA |
May 2002 |
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Are seed
companies taking full advantage of the wide array of services
offered by the seed labs to protect their seed, their
companies and their customers? |
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In general,
the US vegetable and flower seed production companies, our
primary clients, are quite sophisticated and for years have
seen the advantages of seed quality testing, whether they
outsource it to a company such as STA or choose to internalize
the testing. Most make intelligent decisions based on business
needs, risk management and customer demands, and recognize
that having independent assessment of seed quality has many
advantages to the industry. STA tries to provide the industry
with information that will help them make an intelligent
decision about seed quality test result and we offer them a
means to complete the seed quality testing demanded by a more
sophisticated grower. Most companies want to provide their
customers with a quality seed product.
Companies that are new to the US
agricultural markets tend to be slower in acceptance of the
array of seed quality testing, or more precisely the demands
of the market. For example, tomato seed is normally tested at
30,000 or 50,000 seeds for bacterial canker in the US. The
large fields and large transplant houses demand testing at
this level. Often, we find that a company from outside the US
has tested tomato seed for bacterial canker, but at the 5,000
seed level. This level may be OK for the smaller glasshouse
production in their country, but it gives little protection to
the transplant grower that has over 1,000,000 plants in a
greenhouse. |
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