The American Seed Trade Association updated its Guide to Seed Quality Management Practices to include phytosanitary components.

The Guide to Seed Quality Management is designed as an educational tool and to provide general guidance to assist companies in developing and implementing their quality management systems. The guide provides information for maintaining seed product integrity from incorporation of a trait into a breeding program through commercial seed production and sale.

The guide consists of eight modules covering everything from incorporating seed into a breeding program to commercial seed sales. It also provides users with a list of terms and acronyms, resources, general auditing principles and an International Standard Organization.

Readers will be able to easily identify the new content, as the font is displayed in a different color. The guide is available online for free in both a modular and PDF version.

Having established requirements or standard operating procedures, when it comes to seed movement, is imperative in today’s marketplace,” Dunkle says. “This guide should help (users) develop quality seed best management practices and avoid problems in the area of pest management by preventing seed from becoming exposed to certain organisms and taking proper measures—from the obvious such as properly sanitizing equipment to the not so obvious such as testing irrigation water.”

“The guide should be thought of as a skeleton,” Slutsky says. “Companies can use the guide as a general framework that can be adapted to their specific operations.”

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