Seeds informations

Seeds or plants are used by farmers to produce, for example:

• grain which will then be transformed into flour, oil and meal
• forage for livestock feed
• dry and fresh vegetables for human consumption
• fruits
• flowers
• fibres for the textile industry

Seed is a biological material and its quality has a direct impact on the final product.

France is a big seed producer with 335,000 hectares of production and 24,500 seed growers mainly in the north of France, Anjou (north-west), the south-west, Brittany and the Rhone valley.

The value of exports is 527 million euros, compared to 320 million euros for imports, giving a surplus trade balance of about 200 million euros. This has been the trend for the last 12 years.

Because agriculture is such an important industry in France, it has developed the expertise to manage all phases of production from selection of adapted varieties to seed production. The first consumer, the farmer, can therefore have confidence in the conformity and quality of the seed supplied.

Plants are classed in a hierarchy with each upper group containing sub-groups which contain plants which exhibit similar characteristics.  From the widest classification down to the individual plant, the levels of classification are: the division, sub-division, class, order, family, genus, species and variety. In an agricultural context a variety is a group of cultivated plants within a species, which can be clearly identified by, for example, morphological, physiological or chemical characteristics and which, after multiplication, conserve these characteristics. So, a “cultivar” is a “variety”.

A plant variety can be multiplied by :

• Seed propagation : a cross between a male and a female plant, which produces seed.
• Vegetative propagation: the descendant is an identical copy of the original. Cuttings, grafting, marcotting and in-vitro multiplication are the most commonly used procedures.

A variety can be distributed as:

• Seeds : the dispersion and reproduction organs of plants, seeds can be moist (forest species or exotic species with a very high moisture content such as the oak or cocoa) or dry (seed with a low moisture content such as wheat or pea).
• Plants :  young herbaceous or woody plants or damp reproductive organs (tubers, bulbs, rhizomes), created for a culture or for a determined use. Plants can come from a seedling, for example a tomato plant, or from vegetative propagation, for example a vine plant or a garlic plant.

Since the development of agriculture, man has cultivated part of natural plant diversity in order to create varieties adapted to his needs.

Old cultivated plants, wild plants of the same species, the species and related genera all make up the genetic resources of a species.

New varieties also have the potential to eventually become genetic resources. These resources are reserves of plants or populations of plants, which could meet the needs of man and society.




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