SEMAE & GEVES, 50 years of collaboration and ambition!
Jean-Marc BOURNIGAL, Director of the SEMAE group
Anne-Laure FONDEUR, Director of Quality and Official Seed Control, SEMAE
GEVES has played a key role in supporting the development of the seed sector and meeting its needs. Over the past 50 years, it has contributed to establishing the regulatory and scientific framework that has largely contributed to our sector becoming a major player in varietal research and the international seed and plant trade.
With its technical and scientific expertise, GEVES complements SEMAE’s work and helps us to address the different issues of the sector: varietal research, plant health requirements, crop management, regulations, registration in the variety catalogue, analytical needs, protection of biodiversity and intellectual property. We use all this expertise to meet one major objective: to meet all the needs and expectations of customers, citizens and consumers and to guarantee the quality of seeds, plant health, and traceability.
Our seed sector, which is competitive and dynamic, must continually ask itself: how can we remain at the forefront of scientific and technological developments, how can we remain the inspiration behind the evolution of the global normative framework, how can we meet the analytical needs of the sector by ensuring an ecosystem of high-performance laboratories, how can we meet the new expectations of the eco-friendly transition? This is the vision of GEVES’s founders.
Our close collaboration in carrying out our public service missions accentuates our expectations. “We would like GEVES to maintain its level of expertise and help us explore new methods for characterising varieties and plant health in order to market seeds coming from new production techniques,” says Anne-Laure Fondeur, Director of Quality and Official Seed Control. Indeed, the sector is committed to the agro-ecological transition, and the expertise of GEVES is a real lever for the development of our missions.
Our international positioning also depends on the reputation of this expertise, the promotion of standardisation bodies and the protection of an appropriate intellectual property framework: the plant variety right. GEVES is a key player in the implementation of this global framework, which has enabled the French seed industry to develop and become a major player in international trade. However, remaining the world’s leading exporter remains a challenge that requires us to always move forward and anticipate. “More than a source of inspiration, the GEVES shows us the way forward and enable the French sector to remain extremely dynamic and efficient, at national, community and international levels,” concludes Jean-Marc Bournigal, director of the SEMAE group.
