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 Main subject - july/aug 2004
ISTA Seed Symposium projects the future of the production
John Hampton
Lincoln University
hamptonj@lincoln.ac.nz
The diversity of the research being undertaken in seed science and technology is truly impressive; the presentation of such information is indeed a valuable component of the triennial ISTA Congress.
The 2004 ISTA Seed Symposium had as its theme: "Towards the future in seed production, evaluation and improvement" and papers were apportioned into seven areas, being:
* Application of Advanced Technologies
* Organic and Conventional Seed Production
* Viability and Vigour: Evaluation and Impact
* Seed Systems in Emerging and Developing Economies
* Seed Lot Hygiene
* Seed Improvement
* Physiological Basis of Seed Quality
Of the poster papers offered for these themes, around 35% were included in the Viability and Vigour theme, 5% in the Seed Systems theme, and the remaining 60% fairly evenly divided amongst the other five themes. The authors came mostly from Europe (40%), South America (25%) and Asia (25%), with North America, Africa and Australasia having only a few contributors this time. On a per country basis, Brazil predominated - if some 50 papers were offered from Brazil for a Congress in Hungary, just think how many might be offered for the 2007 Congress in Brazil? Will the Seed Symposium Convenor have a pleasant headache?
To finish with the statistics, maize was the species most often reported on, followed closely by soybean. Cereals other than maize were the largest collective group, followed by oil seeds and vegetables. However, it is interesting to note that around 12% of all the papers dealt with tree and shrub species, and that a small number of studies on flower seeds were reported. Is this an indicator of "towards the future" for species in seed research?
What then have we been told about the "future in seed production"?
Obviously organic systems are now a part of this future. We heard about the challenges for the production of quality seeds, these challenges being primarily concerned with crop hygiene (the control of weeds and plant pathogens). Seed treatments for controlling seed-borne pathogens in organic production systems were discussed, including the use of heat (hot water or steam), botanicals (plant extracts) and microwaves. However, the use of bio-protectants as seed treatments, for which there is currently much research world-wide, was hardly mentioned. Was this because researchers had offered their papers to the forthcoming Rome Organic Seed Conference, or was it because there is much commercial sensitivity about these types of results? I suspect the latter might be a reason.
Will high quality seeds be able to be produced under organic systems? - the answer is yes, eventually. Will the presence of organic seeds pose any new demands on seed testing? - the answer is no. Test methods do not depend on whether a seed lot has been produced under an organic or conventional system.
What then of the future for conventional seed production, where the goal is also to produce high quality seeds? Of all the seed production papers presented at this Congress, for me the most significant were the ones in which the effects of the environment during seed maturation on seed quality were reported. My reasons for this are as follows: for commercial seed crop production, experiments involving agronomic management, pest control, harvest timing and method, and drying are "the present"; the results are important, but the methods are, in many cases, "fine tuning" or the application of known principles in new species. They are not "the future". The future I believe is in being able to understand how the environment affects seed quality and to avoid growing seed crops in environments which cause seed quality deterioration. Environments which allow high seed yields do not necessa rily also allow high seed quality; determining the correct environment may yet enable us to consistently produce high vigour seed lots!
The second section of the Symposium theme was "The future in seed quality evaluation". There were three aspects of this section which struck me. The first was that out of all the papers presented, less than 50 dealt with some aspect of testing seed quality and nearly half of these involved seed vigour testing! The second was the efforts being made to increase the number of species for which vigour tests such as accelerated ageing, conductivity, and controlled deterioration can be used. The third was the use of long established test methods to determine seed quality for species not currently in the ISTA Rules.
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