To me spring is the season of renewal – snow is done (except for those occasional “fun” Iowa spring storms), the landscape is no longer pretty much barren and there is no longer the count down for winter to be done with. Every winter I watch daily historical record low temperatures increase as the calendar moves forward. By the time we get to March there is still the possibility of heavy snow, but much less chance of needing heavy winter clothing.
Fall also is a season of renewal for testing species that are harvested mid to late summer or in the fall. At the Iowa State University Seed Lab we are busy year round, it just varies on just how busy. The health testing side seems to be very busy year-round, while “non-health” testing’s peak time tends to be sometime in October to sometime in April. Another sign of renewal at Iowa State is the number of students on campus increasing dramatically with the start of fall semester.
I feel that we are also in renewal as COVID backs off. It, like the flu, is to be reckoned with, but at least we’ve returned to in-person conferences, athletic events, concerts and so on. With the complications from COVID, the war in Ukraine, the delayed availability of products and so on has come the dramatic increase in costs and prices. At the ISU Seed Lab we are pleased that we were able to pretty much hold the line on prices since 2016. Finally we had to give in to higher costs and raise prices on the non-Health side (effective October 1). Increases on the Health side have been made gradually. Price lists for traditional testing (Purity, Germination, Vigor & associated other tests) and for Trait (biotech trait detection and quantification) are available on the ISU Seed Lab website (https://seedlab.iastate.edu/seed-testing-price-list/). Prices are also available with the description of each test method.
This November marks the 43rd year that I have worked at the Seed Lab. Doesn’t time fly by? If you check out the video on the home page of the Seed Lab web page you will see that time has changed me – grayer, heavier and fuzzier. Time has also changed the way we send out the majority of our reports of analysis. Years ago, it was almost exclusively by mail, then it went to mainly mail with some faxed reports to mostly mail with some emailed to today when the bulk of reports are emailed or printed from the web locker system. Are you aware that reports in our secure, available 24 hours a day web locker system are exactly the same as what we email or mail out? Samples can be submitted using the submission form available on the website. E-transfer is a possible option in which information about samples is placed into a special Excel spreadsheet and then it is uploaded into our seed testing database CySeed. Submitting samples via e-transfer saves the time normally spent keying in information, plus what a customer submits is what is uploaded into CySeed.
Also, with COVID backing off is the return to in-person conferences. I will run the ISU Seed Lab booth at this fall’s Western Seed Conference/ASTA Farm & Lawn Seed Conference in Kansas City. ISU Seed Science Center seed conditioning specialist Alan Gaul and I will run the booth in Chicago at the ASTA CSS Seed Conference plus there will be others from Iowa State there. Conferences we will attend in early 2023 include the IPSA Conference in Tucson, ASTA Vegetable & Flower Conference in Orlando and the Agribusiness Expo in Des Moines. AOSA and SCST held a successful annual meeting in early June near Chicago in which we celebrated SCST’s 100 years of improving seed testing. This summer saw the return to seed conditioning workshops here in Seed Science while last spring we added another week of training to the Seed Analyst Short Course. Watch for the opening of registration for next spring’s two weeks of the Seed Analyst Short Course (Advanced Purity and Germination) and next fall’s Beginner Purity week.
We love to talk with customers, email or otherwise communicate about seed testing options, troubleshooting, training and much more. Here is wishing you a GREAT fall! Enjoy the terrific weather and look forward to the renewal of nature and our spirits next spring.
