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PLANT HEALTH
Seed Certification Key to Australia’s Agricultural Future Plant breeding is the essential platform for sustainable agriculture. Seed certification ensures the identity and integrity of certified plant varieties. Certification is a high value risk mitigating proposition for farmers to get plants established from that seeds which are as close as possible to the genetic makeup of the variety as selected by the breeder.
overseas work very hard to pro- duce “better” varieties of crop and pasture plants. Just what is “better” varies greatly and de- pends on the species and the environment in which it is to be grown. Usually, it means charac- teristics such as: • Higher yield in a crop plant; • More leaf for a pasture; • Enhanced resistance or tol- erance to a pest or disease; • Better processing quality for a crop plant; • Better adaptation to a par- ticular environment, like very acid soil, or resistance to frost, or to heat, or to drought; and • There is an almost endless
When the breeder is satisfied, they have a small amount of seed from the plants they have finally selected. This seed has to be multiplied up to hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of tonnes for it be useful to farm- ers over the possible 5 to 15 years commercial life of the variety. Each time the seed is multiplied i.e., seed is sown and then seed is harvested from the plants estab- lished, there is a risk that the spe- cial genetic characteristics which made that new variety valuable, can be lost. This can be through: • Physical contamination with inferior plants or seed caused;
The planet is changing and plants have to adapt too if we are to pro- vide enough food to feed future generations. Plant breeding and innovation are an essential plat- form for sustainable agriculture and food security. Seed certifi- cation ensures the identity and integrity of existing and new cer- tified plant varieties. Each time the seed is multi- plied, that is, seed is sown and then seed is harvested from the plants established, there is a risk that the special genetic character- istics which made that new variety valuable, can be lost. This can be through physical contamination with inferior plants or seed, cross pollination, and natural selection. Certification of seed is designed to minimise these opportunities to lose or diminish the genetic characteristics which make the variety valuable. What does seed certification really mean? Plant breeders in Australia and
- by planting the new variety in a paddock where other varieties of that same spe- cies have grown recently; - at harvest where seed of the new variety is mixed with inferior seed in the header, or in trucks, or in silos;
list of characteristics which might make a new variety better than an older variety it is intended to replace.
Plant breeding is a long and painstaking process. New var- ieties of almost any species can take 8 to 12 years to produce.
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