Certified Seed

The use of Certified seed helps protect the buyer. It is of the best quality because it must meet specific standards of high genetic purity, germplasm identity, high germinating ability, and minimum amounts of other crop seed, weed seed, and inert matter. A clear understanding of certified seed standards for each individual state is critical in order to know what is in a particular lot of seed.

The Association of Official Seed Certification Agencies (AOSCA) recently published “Pre-Varietal Germplasm Certification Standards” for the certification of germplasm that have not been released as a cultivar (variety). These standards offer a reliable way for the seed industry to offer Certified seed of races or ecotypes to the buyer that still have genetic identity but have not gone through the extensive testing required for a varietal release. This means that seed of plants released under the alternative release procedures can be made available to the user in the field much faster. It also means that the full range of adaptation and many performance traits may not be fully known. These new alternative release procedures are now commonly being used for many native species. See Figure 4 for examples of the tags used for both varietal and pre-varietal certified seed.

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Last Modified: 07/05/2007