How Are New Seed Varieties Created?

Hey Neighbor! Today on Row By Row, we have Tracy, the Manager of Home, Garden, and Farmer Market Vegetables at Sakata Seeds. Tracy will share her expertise in the seed industry by discussing the processes involved in creating new varieties of seeds. How long does it take for a new seed variety to be introduced to the market? What is the process of developing new seed varieties? Hoss and Tracy will discuss these and other related topics in today's episode. Let's Grow Together and Get Dirty!

How New Varieties Come to Market

Tracy and the team at Sakata work to create new varieties that have bolder flavors and disease resistance. This process is very tedious and can take up to 10 years! It consists of selecting plants that have the desired qualities and breeding them, to hopefully make offspring that replicate those qualities you desire. They have a number of different processes to decide what qualities are performing the best. For example, in developing tomatoes they tasted tomatoes from each plant and decided on the best flavors, and then tested to see what chemical compounds were present in the fruits that had the best flavor! 

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