Oswald No-Till Farm Cleghorn, IA | Greetings,
I have been chasing this on a bit in the area of soybean. What little I have learned (haven't chased the law that much) is that you can use "Variety Not Stated" in states where actual cultivar isn't required.
Having said that, I attached a spreadsheet I have developed from trolling around seed sheds over the past couple years and from the stuff I use. Many companies now state the cultivar or variety on the soybean seed tag. Disclaimer, this information is from seed tags in open sight of the public or from products I bought and used on my farm. Any mis-information is unintentional and may be due to smudging making tags hard to read and/or typographical errors.
My Thesis:
In respect to soybean diseases like SCN and possibly SDS, it is likely that better scoring of disease tolerance/resistance would be beneficial to farmers. Using standardized testing protocols such as one for SCN being collaborated on by a number of universities, it may be possible for growers to better understand what degree of resistance the genetics they are purchasing should deliver.
Data has proven that significant female cyst reproduction still occurs on soybeans being sold as "Resistant" in sales literature or proclaiming P.I.88788 for example.
I think there should/could likely be a means to test soybean lines for response to SDS so that growers would have better information for decision making.
IF!!! the state seed laws required testing along a certain protocol, it is possible that universities would recoup funds lost from field testing of "same" genetics from different color bags.
I think this information needs to be stated on genetic profile sheets so growers have the information when ordering seed and not waiting until the units show up to see the seed tags.
I think this is perfect policy fodder for grower organizations and have done some work to that respect as a director on the Iowa Soybean Association.
Really, I think it is only a matter of time but growers asking this of their commodity organizations would help. You won't find leadership from Universities on this issue. Some of my discussions with various agronomic researchers suggests to me that they really do not have a handle on how the genetics business works in regards to putting the same thing in different color bags. Some of them do know but don't have political power to do anything about it.
Edited by notilltom 9/2/2009 10:08
Attachments
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 Soybean Variety Numbers2.xls (20KB - 252 downloads)
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new seed tag law?
