From Field to Flour: The hows and whys of certified seed with the Washington State Crop Improvement Association

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Drew Lyon: Hello, welcome to the WSU Wheat Beat podcast. I’m your host, Drew Lyon, and I want to thank you for joining me as we explore the world of small grains production and research at Washington State University. In each episode, I speak with researchers from WSU and the USDA-ARS to provide you with insights into the latest research on wheat and barley production.

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My guests today are Aaron Jeschke and Cheyan James.

Aaron has been the associate manager for the Washington State Crop Improvement Association since 2021. He’s been working in seed production for over 12 years, from seed lab testing to field production in Oregon. In his current role, Aaron is leading the team at the Washington State Crop Improvement Association to provide certification services and foundation seed to Washington small grain and pulse seed dealers.

Hello, Aaron.

Aaron Jeschke: Hi, Drew.

Drew Lyon: And Cheyan is the foundation seed manager in Pullman. She received a B.S. in agricultural economics with an emphasis in ag business from the University of Idaho. Cheyan is leading a team of technicians dedicated to purification of breeder lines, production of foundation seed, and running a busy seed house to ensure varieties are available to seed dealers.

Hello, Cheyan.

Cheyan James: Hello, Drew.

Drew Lyon: Good to have both of you here today to talk a little bit about what you do at the Washington State Crop Improvement Association. I wonder, Aaron, maybe you can give us the history of the Washington State Crop Improvement Association and what services you provide?

Aaron Jeschke: Sure. That’d be awesome. And thanks for having us, Drew. We really appreciate being here.

So, Washington State Crop Improvement [Association]–you can think of us as a sister organization to the Department of Ag—the Washington State Department of Agriculture. And, we are a regulatory agency in the light that we do seed certification, but we also do foundation seed production as well. So, it’s kind of a mixed bag there. Washington’s a little bit strange that we’re a two-agency state. So, that refers back to how we are a sister organization to the Department of Agriculture.

Our primary mission is seed certification. That’s been around for a long, long time. We initially got started with that back in the early 40s and then 1951 is when a Washington [State] Crop Improvement [Association] actually incorporated itself, so we’ve been around quite some time, and it’s been a really important mission all along. Essentially, you know, we’re all about seed certification and ensuring varietal purity and traceability behind all the varieties. And we work behind the pulse licensing and some commercialization between some USDA pulse lines. And then, we also provide a lot of publications and other services throughout the state.

Some of that would be we put out a seed source guide so seed dealers in the state can know where to buy certain varieties of seed and of what class. We’ll put out a seed buyer’s guide in conjunction with the WSU variety testing Dr. Clark Neely. We work on that together at least once a year where we, you know, we crunch all–he crunches his numbers and we format that in a nice publication that goes out to all the seed dealers or whoever wants it. It’s also on our website.

What else? We also put on our annual conference every year, which is happening in November, 11th and 12th this year, which that’s a great avenue or event to really have some one-on-one time with breeders. Drew, you’ve been there multiple times and we appreciate you speaking at those events. It’s really a great opportunity just to kind of take a deep dive into what Washington’s small grains has to offer.

I guess, along with all that, you know, we do a lot of twice a year audit of all the seed dealers so we know what seeds they are certifying and what varieties and what volumes. And kind of along with that, we also do a royalty collection for a couple of different outfits: Washington State and USDA.

Drew Lyon: Okay. One thing you mentioned and that took me a little while to fully understand was foundation seed. Can you kind of talk a little bit about what the difference between certified seed and foundation seed and how they’re handled and what they’re used for?

Aaron Jeschke: Perfect question. That’s something we often get a couple times a year as there’s a little bit of confusion out there: What exactly is certified seed? Because we think about it in two ways. One, it’s kind of a quality assurance program and in the overarching, on the umbrella, a 40,000 ft view is a certification program, but really, I mean, it starts with foundation seed.

So, when Dr. Pumphrey or Dr. Carter hands over a new line to us as breeder seed, we will go through a couple of years of purification on that. Kind of depends on what it is. If it needs two years or three years. Just depends. And then after it’s perfectly clean and exactly what the breeder wants and meets all the quality standards, then we move it into producing foundation class seed. So, that could be considered the first generation of seed after the breeder has handed it off to us.

And foundation seed is what is sold to seed dealers so they can increase it through two other generations. So, it’s a multi-year process and which is one reason it really tends to take some time to really ramp up a new variety.

I mean, it’s really awesome that, for instance, Dr. Pumphrey has, a new hard red [wheat] out: the Hale. We just ended up receiving that seed yesterday. Looks awesome. There’s just not enough to go around, unfortunately. It’s a really a constricting–well, it’s a challenge is really what it is to make sure enough seed is available. And it’s really only the challenge in the first couple of years once it’s released. After it’s been out in the market for a little bit, then there’s usually enough availability.

So essentially, if you want to circle back on the question, you can think of your different classes of certified seed as your different generations. So, your foundation is essentially generation one after breeders’ seed and that is planted and regrown to registered class, your second generation. And then that is planted and regrown to certified class, your third generation. That certified is what most farmers and Washington small grain growers are planting to produce a grain crop.

Drew Lyon: Okay. Excellent explanation. I know when I first got involved, it took me a while to understand it.

Aaron Jeschke: It takes some time to understand what’s going on. It’s all, you know, a generational tracking process because the whole point of certification is really traceability and ensuring varietal purity and quality is there. So, we know exactly where all these fields are. We’ve had people in all these fields throughout the multiple generations, so we have a very good grip on what’s happening in the industry.

Drew Lyon: Okay. You mentioned cleaning the seed that the breeders give you. Can you explain what that means? It’s not dirty. It’s just, some variability still in it that you’re trying to get out?

Aaron Jeschke: Yeah, maybe that’s a good way to hand off to Cheyan a little bit because she does more of the head row purification. So, Cheyan?

Cheyan James: Yeah. So, as Aaron was going through the whole process of how we get to registered and certified seed, we actually start with head row productions and that comes specifically from the breeders. And that’s going to determine later on, you know, what varieties they would like to release. And then we would go ahead and do that production as well, which is turns into breeder seed. And then we produce that, then we produce foundation after.

But when he’s talking about cleaning the seed, you know, it takes a few generations to determine how that variety is going to play out, I guess you could say. But when we bring into the seed house all of the seed from the fields that have been harvested, you get all kinds of stuff that the combine picks up, like weeds mostly is what we find. But, it’s just dirt, all the other chaff,  awns, everything that comes with that specific crop–and we run it through all of our machines in In the seed house. An end product is just the seed in hand, nothing else. You should be able to pick up a handful and see nothing else contamination-wise or dirt, anything. It’s just the seed as it would be right before we get ready to treat it.

Aaron Jeschke: Another part of that, too, is ensuring the genetic integrity of the seed is completely pure, too. So, when we’re actually growing out the head rows, we’re having crews that are ourselves go through there and rogue out. If there’s a tall plot that gets pulled out and physically removed from the field or vice versa, if it’s short and the variety is supposed to be x amount of inches tall, then we’re going to be going through the field along with the breeder to make sure everything is perfect.

Drew Lyon: Okay, that was going to be my next question because I know sometimes early on there’s a little segregating going on and you have to try and get rid of that, so that’s done at this head row and early generation stage. All right. Excellent.

So, I guess we talked a little bit about foundation seed, but why is so much effort put into that stage of the program? Why is foundation seed so important to this whole process?

Cheyan James: So, a little bit of background for foundation seed is Washington Crop Improvement [Association] actually started growing foundation seed for WSU in 1971. But us—Washington Crop [Improvement Association]–we commercialize and maintain small grain varieties for multiple universities and private breeding programs. But we grow up to like 30 varieties these days where prior it was only around like 10, so you can imagine that’s a huge jump. So, we have a hand on everything from when we first plant to when as it’s growing, and then from there on out, harvest and treating and everything else.

But, some of our new large increases this year we’re really excited about. So, we have a winter wheat, which is Nova AX, and spring wheat, we have Bush and a new Butch CL+. But when it comes to that challenge Aaron was talking about, we have not enough seed sometimes, but this year we’ve really tried to mitigate that with doing a bunch of larger increases. So, hopefully we have more than enough to fulfill the orders that I have that come in. Which, a little bit on that is we do a lot of year in advance orders or we try to where that is, we put out an order form, which would be right now, and then our distributors can come in and order seed and hopefully they can order for the current season, but then we give them the opportunity to put in an order for the next year.

So, we base our increases off of those year-in-advance orders. So, hopefully we can get enough year-in-advance to kind of determine which varieties are going to blow up, which varieties we already kind of anticipate are going to need more for the next year–in hopes that we can plant and have more than enough to fulfill each order that comes in.

A little bit [of] background on what’s going on in the seed house right now is we are kind of transitioning into getting all of our increases in from the field. So, we’re off harvest now and we’re going into getting all those varieties cleaned. We have to run them through a bunch of different machines to get that pure seed I was telling you about earlier, and then send in samples, make sure everything comes back from the lab how it’s supposed to, and then we can go into treating seed to hopefully get those orders out of the door. But we’re kind of in the process of switching that now from harvest and just full run, all guns blazing, trying to get that seed cleaning out the door as fast as possible for planting.

But, our goal is essentially to ensure a quality product out the door, and we take like delicate care of every stage to that, which includes seed treatment, making sure we have the cleanest product that that seed treatment will go on. But we want to supercharge our product, right? So, if we have the best seed, which starts from planting and making sure we have no pests, which include like weeds, animals, no disease, we start from the ground level.

So, every stage up to getting this product out the door, we’re taking delicate care of our product to make sure that we have the best product once it’s finished. So, towards the end, we take the seed treatment that we put on to that seed and we make sure we have everything quality-wise product that way too.

But it’s, you know, we put seed treatment on that has insecticide that’s going to mitigate disease once planted. We also take care in putting certain…

Aaron Jeschke: Micros.

Cheyan James: Yeah. Certain micros, thank you, Aaron, onto our seed treatment. Like, if we’re deficient in an area, we want to make sure we have zinc on there. We want to make sure we have boron in certain areas and everything like that. So, once the actual product is out the door and in the hands of the distributors, we want to make sure what they’re planting, they’re going to get the best and most healthy plant once it’s planted in the ground, and then they can in turn get the best product once they harvest.

Drew Lyon: Okay. And, you know, that’s a real challenge here. When I was in Nebraska, you know, harvest would end sometime in July and we didn’t start planting until very late August or September, so there was four to six weeks there to kind of get prepared. And here, there’s very little time between harvest and planting again. So, it’s a real challenge. And plus, you just mentioned instead of 10 varieties you’re handling 30 varieties. So, really quite a feat to get that all done in the short period of time you have.

Cheyan James: Yeah. We are running on all cylinders once we start getting that product in. It’s all hands on deck until we can get it out the door.

Drew Lyon: Okay. You know, we talked about how you get new varieties in, but how do you make the decision when to stop carrying a line?

Aaron Jeschke: Yeah, it’s a great question because, you know, oftentimes older lines might have popularity in, well, maybe one section of the state where it’s–a great example of this is like Sequoia, where it’s an older variety. It’s actually still public, I believe. And, that one is really just kind of, you know, it’s got its home in Horse Heaven. They like it down there.

Drew Lyon: Okay.

Aaron Jeschke: Yeah.

Drew Lyon: So, how do you decide whether you–how long you’re going to hold on to something like Sequoia?

Aaron Jeschke: We always try to keep a little bit of a backup just in case somebody comes out of the woodwork and says, “I need a couple acres of foundation seed,” then we’ll have a breeder seed source to go back to, but, you know, it’s becoming a challenge, a logistical challenge to really archive all these varieties and maintain them because, you know, maybe you have to regrow these things every five or so years just to make sure we have a fresh batch of seeds.

So, yeah, it’s a real challenge.

Drew Lyon: Okay. So, one thing I noticed coming from Nebraska is in Nebraska people didn’t buy certified seed except when they were changing a variety. So, a lot of brown bagging. I came here and growers use a lot–I think I’ve heard 90% certified seed. So, they evidently see the value in growing it.

What would you say? Why should those growers who maybe aren’t using certified seed, why should they consider using certified and foundation-quality seed?

Aaron Jeschke: Well, there’s a lot of reasons. I mean, economics are really going to drive the decision behind that. I mean, I talked with a grower in Oklahoma and he’s harvesting–you know, don’t look too shocked, but like 13 bushel wheat. So, the economics there maybe don’t play to using certified seed. But for the PNW, we’re a really unique region.

And we’ve actually as a region kind of gone through some hard lessons on why we use certified seed. Kind of in loose terms–I know back in the 90s there was a pretty massive freeze out problem, so a lot of winter wheat acres [were] just totally toast. So, we ended up having to really scramble as an industry statewide to get enough seed replanted–or to replant.

And they went all over the place and it came back, you know, there was some weed contamination on some common seed lots, so that’s one reason certification and using certified seed became such an important aspect to ensuring the integrity of PNW grain exports. Stay strong—and the quality stays strong. I think that’s really a main driver behind the PNW’s usage of certified seed.

I mean, it’s really quality. I mean, we want to make sure we’re having quality from the moment we sell it to when it gets all the way down to the certified generation or class to the end user. I mean, it’s really about that quality. And really, [it] kind of goes beyond that, too. I mean, a lot of it’s about traceability, too, because if there is a, you know, a contaminant problem in a seed lot and certification provides the traceability to know where that came from from the beginning when it was foundation seed.

We also talked a little bit about genetic integrity a little bit, you know, along with that. And you can have some improved germination rates because seed testing is required on certified seed, so we know, you know, what the physical purity is, what the germination rate is, and whether, you know, potentially if it has a trait, if it passed a bioassay.

You know, another huge one, too, with certified seed is you were staying within the compliance and the regulations. So, most varieties that are getting released now that are Title 5 and required to be certified, I mean they’re required to be certified. Full stop.

Drew Lyon: Okay.

Aaron Jeschke: You know, so that’s ensuring–and when you’re buying certified seed, you’re assured that the dealer has gone through the correct process and, you know, is following the correct standards and regulations.

You know, and I guess a lot of it in my mind really comes down to, you know, this is a product that’s traceable from, you know, field to flour, essentially. And that really, I think, speaks to the quality of what the PNW wheat buyers are looking for.

We’re very much–I guess, the PNW, we’ve always been a like an industry global leader in wheat quality and we’re always focusing on high-quality standards and end-use characteristics. But, it’s really kind of fun because those are driven by the customers, right? And so, we’ve been really focused on and responsive to those export markets. And I think as a region we will continue to be a reliable supply of all that, of high-quality grain. And of course, you know, these consumers will continue to look to the PNW because they have an expectation and they know we’re meeting it. And certified seed plays, you know, that kind of hinge point part in all of this because that’s where the quality comes from.

Drew Lyon: All right. Well, Aaron, Cheyan, thanks for coming in today and talking a little bit about the importance of the certification process. The work that the Washington State Crop Improvement Association does and how it aids the whole industry– because we are an export industry in this part of the world and quality is very important. What you do is pretty critical to ensuring that.

Thank you, both.

Aaron Jeschke: Yeah. Thanks for having us here. Much appreciated.

Cheyan James: Yeah. Thank you so much.

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Thanks for joining us and listening to the WSU Wheat Beat podcast. If you like what you hear don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast app. If you have questions or topics you’d like to hear on future episodes, please email me at drew.lyon — that’s lyon@wsu.edu — (drew.lyon@wsu.edu). You can find us online at smallgrains.wsu.edu and on Facebook and Twitter [X] @WSUSmallGrains. The WSU Wheat Beat podcast is a production of CAHNRS Communications and the College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences at Washington State University.

I’m Drew Lyon, we’ll see you next time.

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The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed by guests of this podcast are their own and does not imply Washington State University’s endorsement.