Tough to get right

I’ve been fortunate to have visited the research bases of some wonderful seed producing companies, both at home and abroad, and never failed to be amazed at the levels of sophistication on display… and more than that the patience displayed by those involved in identifying new varieties of seed. Not just patience, it takes many many years for a new variety to become commercially viable, but the disappointments are huge and frequent.

For example, you can be working on a new drought/ disease resistant strain and everything is looking great. On trail plots it is outperforming everything else and you think you are on a winner. Let’s face it there is no point in producing a new variety which doesn’t match up to what is already available, so the bar for a successful new seed is set extremely high. Then when everything is looking just right you find that while the seed has all the properties you want from a new seed you discover that the one thing it’s not very good at is reproducing and you just can’t produce the yield to make it viable. It could have taken years to get to that point and it’s back to the drawing board.

That’s the life of grass seed producer. So much has to go right for the next breakthrough.

Thank you for all the work you do and keep taking the knocks! It’ll be worth it in the end.