Each year growers are bombarded with information from seed companies who say their varieties are the best. The role of crop testing programs at Land Grant Experiment Stations is to provide growers with timely, impartial information about variety characteristics and performance. By providing this information, public crop testing programs help growers in the North Central states remain competitive in today's global marketplace. Translating this to an economic impact at the farm level is difficult. However, considering the value of the production of several crops in the North Central states, even a relatively small shift toward greater utilization of the top producing varieties has the potential to generate millions of dollars of additional farm income.
Astute growers are able to capture that extra income by selecting the variety best suited to their.
Having access to reliable and impartial information at every step of the process is vital to the success of today's farmer. Public variety testing programs provide unbiased information on variety selection, a key component of the crop production system. Testing methodology has become more complex with advances in plant breeding and biotechnology. Our understanding of what constitutes a unique variety is changing. Individual genes and sets of genes can be manipulated within species and across species with greater control and creativity.