United Kingdom
April 2002
Interview with Paul Ayres
Chief Executive Officer, Germain's Seed Technology, United Kingdom
What does the seed industry look like today from GTG vantage point?
As long-standing suppliers to the seed industry, we have been witnessing a period of sustained and tremendous change over the past decade. The major seed companies have continued to consolidate to create their global presences, encompassing substantial portfolios of crop species - although smaller enterprises serving specialised niche markets still remain.
All these businesses, whatever their size, are being faced with greater demands for flexibility imposed by much more dynamic markets than before. New varieties and added-value products are needed, against a backdrop of mounting cost pressures on growers to produce competitively and increasing consumer requirements for the highest quality at the lowest economic and environment cost.
At the same time, the emergence of new market players in developing agricultural nations is creating new needs and opening new routes for the further globalisation of supply of seed varieties, treatments and support technologies. This is calling for considerable inputs and investments, in the face of the current difficulties in worldwide agricultural economy.
However, where there are challenges, there are also opportunities.
In what ways is seed technology developing?
Seed treatment technology is primarily to enhance and protect seed germination and emergence, under a wide range of climatic and agronomic conditions. For some crops, precision sowing is also a key feature - which is the original reason seed coatings such as pelleting and encrusting were developed over fifty years ago.
The last two decades have brought considerable advances in coating technologies to apply agrochemicals to seeds, and for many crops these are effectively replacing the simple slurry treatments that were traditionally used. This trend has been a key factor underpinning the development of high quality application standards for seed treatments. Precise pesticide loading on a seed number or weight basis, and indeed on individual seeds, has now become the norm in many markets.
The other major area of development has been in seed quality upgrading and priming, in which GTG is very active. At one time these physiological improvement techniques were largely confined to low-volume high-value crops, because they were limited by scale-up and cost considerations. However, as a result of significant improvements in the process and developments in scale-up engineering, these treatments are now finding applications in some higher-volume field crops, such as sugar beet.
What has been the role of seed-applied crop protection treatments in the last ten to fifteen years?
The introduction of more effective and safe (and often expensive) insecticide and fungicide treatments to protect seeds and seedlings from pests and diseases has made a significant difference to the way in which such molecules are applied to crops. By increasingly using the seed as the major delivery route, insecticide molecules such as tefluthrin, imidacloprid and fipronil have brought about a value-added approach to seed treatments in agronomic crops. More recently their entry into horticultural and other crops has also made a significant impact. Certainly within the European Union, the re-registration review of major field-applied crop protection chemicals has created a sustained momentum away from broadcast, granular and spray applications, towards seed-applied crop protection.
Seed treatments also offer the grower greater convenience and the security of knowing that his crop is protected from the moment it is sown.
Finally, the increasing use of seed treatments away from blanket field applications has considerably reduced the amounts of synthetic active ingredients delivered on a land area basis, which has brought an obviously positive environmental dimension to the whole area of agrochemical crop protectants.
What are your thoughts on the future of seed treatments?
The whole concept of modern seed treatments revolves around precision and maintaining seed vigour. Active ingredients provide the means to control the pest or disease target and the role of the professional applicator is to ensure that the potential is achieved by delivering treatments onto seed in a precise manner and at the correct dosage. Current seed application capabilities and know-how will shape the way in which we work in the future, raising expectations of even closer pesticide loading tolerances on crops and new opportunities to apply other inputs on seeds.
Although loading materials onto the seed will have ultimate practical limits – such as when they restrict germination - there is now still further potential in using the seed as a delivery vehicle as an alternative to conventional broadcast crop treatment. I am thinking for instance about the successful application of living beneficial micro-organisms, either by themselves or in combination with traditional agrochemicals.
Organic crop production is another market segment showing tremendous growth. We at GTG are already providing solutions such as organically-approved coatings for seed. Because conventional production systems using synthetised chemicals cannot enter the organic crop production programmes, novel approaches to seed-borne disease control are one promising new area of large scale development for us, which I expect will provide future benefits in the growth of this sector.
What are the specialist areas required by a seed technology company?
The more traditional areas of seed production and processing, variety and disease diagnostics are now being complemented and changed by better understanding from seed physiology, biochemistry and, increasingly, molecular biology.
I believe that at GTG we have these ingredients, allied to our traditional core skills and knowledge, gained over many years of experience in this industry.
What sort of new expectations do you anticipate from growers and seed providers in the near term?
It seems clear to me, from our experience, that greater pressure from growers for just-in-time, fully specified products will continue to place enormous pressures on seed companies in terms of maintaining quality, product integrity and full audit traceability, as well as the level of service to their own customers. Currently, inventory management has to avoid large quantities of carryover seed stock that may become obsolete, which has increased the dependency on new season seed and often on eleventh–hour seed treatment. Growers and farmers now expect to be able to order their chosen variety and seed treatment, as well as other farming inputs, very late, exacerbating the challenge for all in the supply chain. More and more, the test for the seed industry lies in being able to satisfy this demand without compromising quality and service, against the background of price competition and of a continued drive to lower cost inputs.
In addition, I believe that the entire industry will increasingly be looking for the "leading edge" treatments and benefits that will give them further opportunity to add value to the entire chain of production. This will continue to increase the need for customised approaches - by product innovation, cost-effective technologies and distinctness of offers - to meet customer needs. These are a tough set of demands, but I can see it will be necessary to fulfil them all to compete successfully and continue to grow in tomorrow’s agri-business environment.
Do you consider partnerships at technological levels important?
I see that, by providing seed technology products and services to the seed industry, we play an important role in this fundamental element of the entire agricultural cycle. Both currently and in the future there are challenging demands being placed on our sector.
Even as a very financially stable business, GTG increasingly looks to partnerships with its customers and suppliers, which bring mutual benefit. These partnerships are important to GTG as they provide an exchange of views and ideas in the development of products and develop trust and confidence in long-standing working relationships.
What are the advantages of an independent seed technology service?
GTG’s independence means that we do not own, breed or sell seed, nor, for that matter, do we have parentage to our suppliers. Our activities, and our commitment to investment in R&D and technology supported by our high level of financial stability, are firmly centred on providing seed enhancement and coating technology products.
I believe this helps us to ‘think out of the box’ and bring innovative concepts and products forward to help seed companies focus on their essential business added values.
Being the caretaker of valuable seed, which is not your own, while enhancing its value, is not a responsibility to be taken lightly. This is pivotal in our philosophy and ethical stance as a business, and we go to considerable lengths to ensure product traceability systems, seed security and integrity, process quality assurance and control procedures. All of this, of course, is built into delivering ‘just in time’ competitive services, tailored to the individual needs of our customers.
What would you like the reader to know about GTG and its activities?
GTG, the Germain’s Technology Group, is the largest independent custom-coating and enhancement company in the world. The Group is currently made up of Germain’s in the UK, Ireland and Poland, IST in Holland, Spain and Germany, and the businesses of Seed Systems and ETS in the USA.
We have a dedicated staff of over 160 worldwide providing specialist seed technology solutions for a wide portfolio of agronomic, ornamental and horticultural seed species. These services are provided from our ten production facilities, or transferred via technology projects to a global customer base from New Zealand to Finland and from China to California, and they include:
- Seed disinfection, priming and physiological treatments
- Seed coating and pelleting services
- Seed-applied crop protection treatment services
- Engineered seed technology solutions, including coating equipment, systems and coating materials.
Topics
Species
