Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, Canada
December, 2012
Private companies seeking private data seed registration now have another option for agronomy, disease and quality testing for cereal genetics through a new service offered by ICMS Inc.
“We’ve initiated this service because third-party testing for genetics is critical in terms of carrying out relative assessment,” states Brent Wright, ICMS president. We know there’s a significant need for more testing options for both Canadian and non-Canadian companies that want to enter the market and we’re ready to provide that,” he adds.
Wright anticipates that increased access to third-party testing through a pooled private data system will in turn benefit the western Canadian agriculture industry by providing expanded genetic varietal options.
Veteran seed industry player, Dale Alderson, is spearheading the ICMS private pooled testing initiative and he believes the service will provide huge value to western Canadian agriculture, including farmers, seed developers and agribusiness. “The end result will be increased choices and opportunities that will help Canadian agriculture become more efficient, competitive grain producers,” he states.
Dr. Doug Brown, retired researcher from AAFC will be supporting the evaluation of the agronomy and disease trials of the private variety testing.
ICMS is well positioned to offer the pooled testing based on its 28 years of dependable third-party testing services for pesticides, fertilizers and plant breeding genetics. “Expansion into a pooled genetic testing service is a logical extension to the services we currently offer,” states Wright.
ICMS will follow established stringent protocols of objective evaluation, creating equivalency testing consistent with public co-op testing trials.
States Wright, “I’m certain that with our combined years of experience and industry reputations, our team will instill confidence that we can deliver objective data to cereal genetic sponsors to allow them to accurately assess the merit of their candidate lines, and move forward with the registration of their lines.”
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