SeedWorld Podcast: Recent Episodes
Alex Martin
When diving into the vegetable and flower seed sector, what’s one thing you really need to have to succeed? Well, according to Robb Bauman, you need to have a lot of patience ready to go.
With trends constantly changing, unexpected events and long wait times for breeding, if you dive into the vegetable seed business like Bauman did, you need to be prepared for anything to happen.
“I thought you had to have patience in making a jet engine part with some of the complexities and some of the things that can go wrong,” Bauman, partner with True Leaf Market, says. “Man, that is just such a simpler world than the seed business — a million more things can go wrong. You have to have patience and know you don’t really control your life. The world controls your life, and you’re just along for the ride.”
And though some unexpected events — like a world pandemic — can be frustrating and inconvenient to deal with, Bauman says it’s opened doors in the gardening sector.
“So many people panicked and jumped in and started gardening,” he says. “One because they had time, and two, because the nervousness with the supply chains. Everybody became very conscious of food and where it came from and its availability. It was such a great opportunity.”
Though the sector wondered if the gardening trend would last, fortunately, in 2023, Bauman’s seeing that young people are staying in the gardening sector. Along with that, Bauman sees another trend — container gardening.
“A lot of younger people haven’t established a house yet,” he says. “They’re finding they can grow in a container setting — and the number of varieties people are getting creative about growing in containers continues to grow.”
Make sure to listen to Bauman’s full podcast above.
Want to read or listen to more? Visit:Ric Dunkle Updates on Phytosanitary Issues Popping Up
Nathan Pumplin Dreams of Healthier, Better Tasting Tomatoes
Year of the Spirea
Awards Give Home Gardeners Ease at Variety Choice
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When working on importing, exporting or even producing seed outside of the U.S., phytosanitary concerns can pop up. Keeping up-to-date on what other regulatory bodies are concerned with in terms of phytosanitary concerns can help keep businesses and the U.S. ahead of the curve. According to Ric Dunkle, there’s a few things to be aware of in 2023.
“On the general side in the phytosanitary world, there’s much more of an emphasis being placed on molecular seed health testing to get your seed certified for export or re-export,” says Dunkle, senior director of seed health and trade at the American Seed Trade Association (ASTA). “The problem is that technology is so sensitive, that they can pick up very faint traces of a particular pathogen.”
Due to the sensitivity of the test, ASTA and other associations are having to address the issue of biological relevance — especially because the regulatory world is rather black and white. If a pathogen is detected with your seed, it won’t be certified or it will be rejected at the port of entry, Dunkle says.
In addition, diagnostics are becoming ever-increasingly important to the phytosanitary world, according to Dunkle. Why? Particularly for discussions and new research projects.
As an example, he uses the issue of high plains virus, which is affecting corn, sweet corn and popcorn varieties.
“The government of Chile placed those infections under what we call official control and recently issued an emergency rule that now requires seed being exported to Chile to be certified free from high plains virus,” Dunkle says. “It sounds simple, but it’s a lot more complicated than that. We have high plains virus pretty much throughout corn production areas in the U.S.”
With Chile being so important to areas of the U.S., Canada and Europe due to counter season production, Dunkle says that this is posing challenges for the development of new varieties., as molecular testing of small seed lots is an issue.
“How can you effectively test those?” he asks. “We’re looking at some other options for that.”
Make sure to listen to Dunkle’s full interview above to hear about other phytosanitary updates from ASTA.
Want to read more? Visit:Nathan Pumplin Dreams of Healthier, Better Tasting Tomatoes
Awards Give Home Gardeners Ease at Variety Choice
What’s Your Final Goal in Breeding? It’s Not Always Obvious
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There’s always going to be a next, big thing in vegetables. But where do the trends lie? In flavor? In shape? In color?
For Nathan Pumplin, while trends are wonderful to fall into, he dreams of one thing: a more nutritious and better-tasting tomato. But, it just so happens that better tasting, more nutritious tomato hit on a new trend in the vegetable sector: a vibrant color.
“We’re offering a new option of an excellent tomato that’s enabled with biotechnology, but it exists in a marketplace that has a lot of other options,” Pumplin, CEO of Norfolk Healthy Produce, says. “Our other key message is our tomato is a fantastic tomato. It tastes great, and that’s really a key takeaway. We’re aiming to deliver a fantastic tomato with more nutrition and more convenience.”
To achieve a healthier tomato, Pumplin says the goal originally was to ensure it was more nutritious by including an increased amount of antioxidants in it. In his own words, this new GMO tomato has as many antioxidants as a blueberry, but the same great flavor of tomatoes you know and love.
But, due to the increased antioxidants, the tomato changed from the typical red to an almost plum-like purple.
“We really believe In eating the rainbow — it’s very simple advice for eating,” he says. “If you want to get all your vitamins and nutrients, you want fresh foods from all the color groups — and there aren’t so many purple options. We think there’s a huge opportunity to meet unmet needs in the purple space with our products.”
Make sure to listen to Nathan Pumplin’s full podcast interview above.
Want to read more? Visit:The Future of the Purple GM Tomato Lies with Consumers
Ric Dunkle Updates on Phytosanitary Issues Popping Up
Awards Give Home Gardeners Ease at Variety Choice
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Florida needs alfalfa, but right now can’t really grow it. Anju Biswas is out to change that. Biswas is a Ph.D candidate in the agronomy department at the University of Florida. She works on on alfalfa breeding using phenomics and genomics selection and crop modeling to develop heat-stress tolerant alfalfa cultivars. She has obtained a […]
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Did you know waxy sorghum can weather in the field faster than its non-waxy counterpart? Turns out that might not be true after all. Mitchell Kent grew up in central Illinois where he received a bachelor’s degree in crop science from the University of Illinois. Mitchell then moved to Texas where he received a master’s […]
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Seed and its intellectual property protection regulations have been put under the microscope — but do IP regulations really hinder the U.S. economy? The USDA announced on May 11 that they were opening a comment period as a result of President Biden’s Executive Order on “Promoting Competition in the American Economy,” to examine competition issues […]
The post Does Intellectual Property Actually Hinder U.S. Competition? – A Seed World Strategy Webinar & Podcast appeared first on Seed World.
Mary Jane Espina is a Ph.D candidate in applied plant sciences at the University of Minnesota. Her research focuses on identifying the genetic basis underlying the resistance to iron deficiency chlorosis in soybean. Originally from the Philippines, she also has a fascination with a vegetable called jute mallow, a staple for millions. She sits down […]
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According to Mental Health America, just prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, 19.86% of adults experienced a mental illness — that is the equivalent of nearly 50 million Americans. Unfortunately, over half of adults with a mental illness do not receive treatments, which totals to over 27 million adults in the U.S. untreated for a mental illness. […]
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The National Association of Plant Breeders (NAPB) Private Sector Plant Breeding Award, first established in 2020, recognizes an individual whose accomplishments as ascientist in the private sector have had extraordinary impact in the field of plant breeding in areas such as germplasm development, cultivar release, technological innovation, andleadership. The 2020 recipient is Dr. Thomas C. […]
The post How Tom Osborn Makes Private Sector Impact in Plant Breeding appeared first on Seed World.
The virtual meeting of the National Association of Plant Breeders took place last week. In our final podcast from the proceedings we talk with Borlaug Scholar Tia Dunbar about her rice research. Dunbar is obtaining her MS degree in Plant Breeding at Texas A&M University in College Station, TX. Originally hailing from the San Francisco […]
The post Nanotechnology and the Future of Rice: Borlaug Scholar Tia Dunbar appeared first on Seed World.
Zara York is a Ph.D student in Dr. Kate Evans’s pome fruit breeding program at Washington State University Tree Fruit Research and Extension Center in Wenatchee, WA. She was also a Borlaug Scholar for this year’s meeting of the National Association of Plant Breeders (NAPB) which took place last week. We catch up with her […]
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We chat with Ammani Kyanum at the National Association of Plant Breeders virtual meeting about her sorghum research and something called trifluoromethanesulfonamide, which despite being really hard to pronounce is kind of a big deal.
The post Ammani Kyanam Explains what Trifluoromethanesulfonamide is appeared first on Seed World.
As the 2020 meeting of the National Association of Plant Breeders wraps up today, we chat with David Bubeck of Corteva Agriscience & Rich Pratt of New Mexico State University about the importance of public-private partnerships in the future of the NAPB and the Plant Breeding Coordinating Committee.
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As Day 3 of the National Association of Plant Breeders annual meeting winds down, we talk with Borlaug Scholars William Singer and Clayton Carley about the world of soybeans.
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As Day 3 of the National Association of Plant Breeders annual meeting gets underway, we chat with four Borlaug Scholars all working in many different crops, but with a focus on wheat.
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The 2020 meeting of the National Association of Plant Breeders continues! Borlaug Scholar Natalie Kaiser is a Ph.D candidate in the Potato Breeding and Genetics Program at Michigan State University. She is employing molecular and genomic tools to understand the genetic architecture of host plant insect resistance and to develop Colorado potato beetle (CPB) resistant […]
The post Propagating Potato Via True Seed: NAPB Borlaug Scholar Natalie Kaiser appeared first on Seed World.
The second day of the 2020 National Association of Plant Breeders virtual meeting kicks off shortly. We sit down with this year’s award winners to talk about their breeding accomplishments and what drives them to success in their industry. Winning this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award is Wayne Hanna of the University of Georgia, an internationally […]
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The 2020 virtual meeting of the National Association of Plant Breeders began today. We sit down with Borlaug Scholar David Tork to talk about the intricacies of modern flax breeding. Tork is a second-year MS student at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. After gaining initial plant breeding experience as an intern at Dow AgroSciences (now […]
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