SEEDS

The land’s ability to produce both the food and fuel the world needs is placing a significant stress on current agricultural systems. Increasing populations in both developed and developing countries, loss of agricultural land to urbanization, desertification, climate change from man-made and natural causes, and the increased awareness of the environmental footprint of agriculture, all require a concerted effort to produce more crops and plants from a limited land base. Thus, there is a continuing need to improve the yield and quality of all crops, whether grown for food, feed, fiber or fuel while minimizing the inputs and impacts of that production.

Traditional approaches to plant breeding and selection have been successful and will continue to play an important role in crop improvement. However, advances in understanding plant molecular genetics, whole-genome sequencing and bioinformatics have provided additional tools to discover new traits in crops. These modern approaches allow for the creation and identification of new genetic variation for various crop traits and the incorporation of these traits into commercial crops to increase value. In many cases, natural variation within existing populations for the trait in question may be insufficient to provide significant enhancements in crop yield. Hence, there is significant importance to developing the best crop seeds that will address the issues through a combination of improved breeding techniques and incorporation of novel traits that add particular value to the crop.

Frontier has developed non-GMO populations for these various crops that are either useful for TILLING or Forward Genetic Screening.

• CANOLA (2 varieties)
• WHEAT (Hard Red Spring)
• SOYBEAN (2.1RM)
• RICE (2 varieties)
• ALFALFA (in progress)