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 Main subject - July/aug 2008
Evolution of the seed industry during the past 40 years
Bernard Le Buanec
b.lebuanec@worldseed.org
At the end of my first year of college when I made my first internship in the laboratory of plant physiology of the French National Institute of Agronomical Research INRA, in August 1961, UPOV was not yet established and the genetic code was not completely deciphered. From that date until now, significant events that have had an in-depth influence on the seed industry have occurred.
The list is very heterogeneous with technical and regulatory events but all have had an impact on the seed industry during the past 40 years. All of them would certainly deserve a full presentation. So I will simply fly over some of the topics.
1. Development of hybrids
Today, for many crops, we take the use of hybrids for granted. This was not the case 40 to 50 years ago. As you all know, the first F1 hybrids commercialized on a large scale were corn, developed in the USA. But contrary to what is the general feeling now, in the early 1960s, if we except USA, hybrids were grown only on 21% of the world maize area.
In addition of improving yield to the farmer, hybrids have changed the seed industry in three ways:
- Need for the farmer to buy seed every year
- Development of specialized seed producers sometimes in different places of the world
- Increase value of the seed
The difference in value of hybrid seed compared to non hybrid varies from crop to crop and also, from country to country. For oilseed rape, the hybrid price is twice the non hybrid, for maize five times and for rice up to ten times. Even if often the quantity of seed per hectare is lower for hybrids, the change from non hybrid to hybrid, has increased the global value of the seed market very significantly.
We can say that the expansion of hybrids has been instrumental in the development of the seed industry.
Phases in the creation of cultivars
2. Evolution of seed technology
The processes a seed is going through before being sold to a farmer are increasingly sophisticated for all crops but in particular for vegetables.
The importance of seed treatment is also shown by the evolution of global seed treatment sales. The result of that evolution is that the seed that is sold is no longer only the reproductive material of a plant but a package of technology. This also has an impact on the price of the seed sold to the farmer. In addition, for some crops, micro-nutrients and microbial inoculants are added to the seed.
Evolution of global comunication and of regulation enviroment of seed industry
3.Plant biotechnology
The third aspect I would like to focus on is the development of plant biotechnology and in particular genetic engineering and molecular marker assisted selection.
3.1. Genetic engineering
The rate of adoption of GM varieties at world level is unprecedented compared to any new agricultural technology. In terms of seed market value, including the sale price of the biotech seed plus any technology fee that applies. It is interesting to have a look at the impact of genetic engineering on the price of seed by comparing the price of a non-GM variety with its GM counterpart.
Relative value of GM seeds considering some factors
3.2. Molecular marker assisted selection
The use of DNA markers in plant was first published in 1983 and the milestone publication is certainly the article by Paterson et al in 1988. You have certainly already realized that I use the terms Molecular Marker Assisted selection and not Marker Assisted selection only. Indeed, marker assisted selection is not new at all and breeders have always tried to find early markers that could predict what would be the final behaviour, that is phenotype, of the variety in the farmer's field.
Molecular marker assisted selection, establishing a link between one or more DNA markers and a simple or more complex inherited characteristic, is the new development that is, at the moment, attracting huge investments. Indeed, those markers allow saving a significant amount of time to select a given trait. In that regard, I would like to take the privilege of the speaker to make a comment: we see more and more often publications speaking of the myth of phenotype, of genotype driven selection and so on and so forth. In my opinion this is not correct, as breeders are always, in the end, looking for a phenotype that will be sold to the farmers. Molecular markers are just a tool, essential I agree, to select that phenotype. In fact, in practice with that tool, plant breeding has two different phases: prediction, the molecular markers, and observation, the phenotype.
In addition to these technical developments, namely development of hybrids, seed technology and biotechnology, we have experienced at the world level drastic changes in the legal and regulatory environment, as indicated in my first slides. For the sake of time, I will not expand on that except a few words on the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety and on the food and feed safety assessment regulations for GM crops that are so cumbersome and expensive, 10 million dollars for one crop/trait, that small and medium companies and public research are indeed excluded. These technical and regulatory changes have had a dramatic impact on the seed industry.
Years of hybrids adoption by specie
page 2 ->> Evolution of the seed industry during the past 40 years
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