portrayed by some environmental groups as an enemy of our ecosystem. I am here today, as a representative of the agri-business industry, to address concerns of agricultural biotechnology and its impact on the environment, particularly the concerns surrounding the environmental impact of gene escape from transgenic plants to wild plants and the development of resistance by pests to genetically a...

The reawakened interest in competition issues in agricultural markets might appear to have found its ideal poster child in the seed industry. Concentration is high and market structure has shown remarkable dynamics over the last 15 years, with high-profile mergers and acquisitions by key players. A dominant firm— Monsanto—seems to have emerged, at least from the perspective of biotech traits pe...

Zambia’s maize seed industry is currently one of the strongest and most competitive in Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper describes the changing structure of the maize seed industry and seed supply chain in Zambia. The aim of the paper is to propose elements of a marketing strategy for seed production and delivery of recently released, provitamin A-rich, orange maize varieties. Information sources ...

While seed source selection is an important initial step in the genetic improvement of Christmas trees, continuously returning to seed collections from natural stands precludes any further improvement in genetic quality. In addition, the genetic variation within most seed sources is tremendous and varies from year to year. In order for the Christmas tree industry to move past the current level ...

Low and erratic seed germination presents a major production problem in the medicinal plants that collectively are called echinacea or purple coneflower (Echinacea angustifolia and E. pallida). In this study, nine seed lots of each E. pallida and E. angustifolia from a wide variety of commercial sources and germplasm collections were collected and treated with a solution of 1.0 mM [144.5 mg·L-1...

In the past three decades, the seed sector has experienced, and is now again experiencing, corporate concentration trends. The fallout of this consolidation is the subject of numerous concerns. However, the seed sector is rather poorly understood. Thus, it is useful to understand it better and to investigate the potential impact on the agri-food chain of the trend toward increased corporate con...