Betaseed Inc. is North America’s premier sugarbeet seed brand, serving growers for more than 40 years.
Betaseed’s success has been driven by a strong commitment to research. With roughly one-third of its employees in North America dedicated to research, and more than 60,000 nursery plots rating varietal disease tolerance characteristics, Betaseed offers seed varieties that meet growers’ unique production challenges.
“Our job is to be prepared for anything that may come along and impact the sugar producer and their ability to get the highest sugar yield per acre,” said Mark Schmidt, Betaseed vice president of sales and marketing. “We want to provide tools and traits that will provide high yield potential.”
Investment is key
In order to guarantee that growers receive high-quality seed, Betaseed invests heavily in research and development. At the beginning of the process, Betaseed team members gather information to help them make informed decisions on what to develop next.
“We have a process in place where information is gathered throughout the year in order to understand what’s going on in the market,” Schmidt said. “Sales managers attend different tours throughout the year. Typically in every market you can visit official variety trials at any time, or sometimes there is a tour event during the week where ag staff, researchers at the cooperative and any growers can stop by and visit the locations and discuss anything they see. It is during these types of events that our team collects information to understand what’s going on in the market.”
Each year, Betaseed holds a formal request process to develop a new portfolio of varieties. During this process, discussions between sales managers and researchers take place to go over their findings from throughout the year and determine what sugar producers will need in the future. From this, the portfolio is then crafted, with input from the Betaseed breeding team.
“We get the portfolios from the sales and marketing groups, and then we look at them alongside what we already have in the pipeline,” said Tiffany McKay-Williams, Betaseed disease assistant breeder. “Our development process is exhaustive, sometimes taking up to 10 years, but we do this because we want to ensure the seed will perform well for growers.”
Although it may take years to develop new varieties, many products build off of one another in what Margaret Rekoske, Betaseed plant breeder, describes as an endless process.
“It’s not really a start and stop kind of project, so much as a continual effort, a continual pipeline full of new genetics and putting together traits that fit the portfolio that has been described to us,” Rekoske said. “We’re trying to fulfill the portfolio so that each grower can have a variety that suits their needs, because all of their needs are different.”
Collective effort
Due to the long-term nature of the development process, Betaseed breeders try to think ahead in order to be prepared for future challenges.
“We breeders and our colleagues try to have foresight so that our breeding programs can be adjusted accordingly,” McKay-Williams said. “It’s always just assessing on a day-to-day basis what the industry needs are, and if we’re moving in the right direction. We’re constantly looking at data and making decisions on which material is excelling and should be put forth to the next step in the breeding process.”
When changes or challenges do arise, Betaseed has an array of assets available to overcome them. This array is made up of internal resources, including a library of sources to combat different diseases in different cases, as well as external resources, including fostering relationships with public geneticists, who often look for novel ways to fight emerging disease or insect problems.
“Collectively, we look for a solution either in existing germplasm, or we look into public sources and try to find a genetic solution. Often solutions are a combination of genetics, chemistry and agricultural practices, and we as breeders focus on the genetics aspect,” Rekoske said. “What drives us for the most part is creating varieties so that growers can make the revenue they need to sustain their farms and sustain the industry.”
According to Pat O’Boyle, Betaseed plant breeder, no single person or department is responsible for developing the seeds in your field, but rather a collective effort by all of Betaseed.
“As the plant breeders, we deliver the end product—the varieties—to the producers in each growing area, but I think many people don’t understand how many people have their fingerprints on our varieties before they are released to growers,” O’Boyle said. “From our basic breeding programs and disease resistance projects, to our commercial seed productions, every member of our research team—including our European colleagues, as well as our sales and marketing teams—make valuable contributions to our varieties, whether directly or indirectly. Each variety is the end result of a true team effort, and every member of our team works hard to provide growers with access to the best genetics in the industry.”
According to McKay-Williams, it is a shared set of values that tie all Betaseed team members together in their efforts to breed confidence in sugarbeet industry members.
“Our company really believes in research and supports it wholeheartedly,” McKay-Williams said.
To learn more about Betaseed, visit www.Betaseed.com. Talk to your local sales representatives on what seed varieties will be right for you.