Introduction to farm seeds
We always encourage our customers, to only stock crop varieties that have made it on to the Dept of Agriculture (DoA) Recommended List, because this is the only totally independent assessment of the performance of those varieties under Irish growing conditions that is available to growers and distributors. Furthermore, we only distribute Certified seed i.e. seed that is deemed by the Department inspectorate, to meet a range of stringent quality criteria. This is certified by the DoA label you will see attached to all bags of certified seed.
It is our policy, to only stock seed of those crop varieties that have made it on to the Dept of Agriculture Recommended List.
The simple seed is where all agriculture starts and without highly specialised plant breeding & seed propagation, there would be no farming as we know it today. The seeds used in modern agriculture are the product of many generations of careful plant selection and propagation by specialist breeders. A huge array of desirable after traits, such as yield, disease resistance, stem strength, colour, flavour etc are selected for, one result being for example, the massively improved yield potential of modern cereal varieties.
Every plant breeder wants to see their variety being grown commercially because they make their money from royalties received on seed sales. It is not surprising then, that you end up with a multitude of individual crop varieties on offer in the market place at any one time. In order to ensure the best varieties can be identified for growers, all breeders are encouraged to submit their varieties for independent evaluation. In Ireland this is done by the Dept of Agriculture..
The end product of this assessment process is the Recommended Lists of Varieties that are published annually for all the main farm crops. These are the varieties that have been independently tested & proven to perform best under Irish growing conditions. It does not cost the breeder anything to submit their varieties for evaluation. So if a seed variety or mixture of varieties is being offered to you that are not on the Recommended List, you should be very sceptical of its real value to you.
If it is not on the Recommended Lists, that is because;
- It was not submitted for evaluation by the breeder….Why not?
- It was submitted, but was not good enough to make the list.
Links:
www.agriculture.gov.ie/farmingsectors/crops/cropvarietyevaluationcve/cvepublicationsinformation/