Seed treatments need to address both complexity and convenience.

Seed treatments have existed for more than a century, and at SeedGrowth we have flagship solutions that have been serving customers for over 30 years. There have been many disruptive developments in the sector over time, but recently, change has come in the form of evolution rather than revolution.

But don’t be fooled: the pace of change is accelerating. In the last few years, some factors have become increasingly prominent in market offers and customer demands – and I presume that they will become even more so in the years to come. What’s interesting is that two of these developments appear to be contradictory: the increasing complexity of customer requirements, and the demand for convenient, easy-to-use solutions. Do these present a paradox for seed companies and seed treatment suppliers? I want to take a moment in this article to explore the situation and discover how it’s possible to meet these apparently conflicting needs, provided you work with the right partners and approach the challenge with expertise and consideration.

A generation or two ago, the seed treatment market may have been dominated by a smaller number of ‘blockbuster’ products. But that’s not the case today. There are more and more companies coming to market with their own technologies – and the rise of biologicals, which are often driven by small or medium-sized companies, is accelerating this even further.

The growing number of relevant and value-adding products on the market means that formulating holistic solutions, combining the best of what’s available to maximize value for our customers, is a more complex undertaking than ever. The experience as a customer, ‘browsing’ the market for the best solutions to meet their needs, can be a bit like browsing social media – they feel that they are bombarded with many different messages and claims, and that it will be challenging and time-consuming to get to the bottom of all this and uncover the optimal combination of solutions. Here, we need to consider efficacy but also compatibility: do all the constituent products work well when applied together, or do they suffer from any unwanted effects?

It's unsurprising, then, that customers are increasingly demanding a convenient experience, enabled by easy-to-use, stable and flexible solutions.

That sets seed and crop protection companies like Bayer a challenge. We always endeavor to add more solutions to our portfolio, either through R&D or collaborations. Even if that means more complexity, it’s a good thing, because it creates new ways to tailor our value propositions to customer needs and to optimize results. But we must also strive to meet the customer desire for convenience, performance and transparency – and to do it all within a narrow application window, where there is little time for repeatedly adjusting treatment parameters. We have to deliver something that works, reliably, on time. But under the surface lie some deeper challenges.

Seed safety is non-negotiable, and is something that we at Bayer take a comprehensive approach to, through rigorous quality control in our own treated seeds and through the ways we support third-party customers with testing, validation and portfolio design. But there are other details to consider when designing safe and effective seed treatment packages.

One is simply that there is a limited amount of surface area on a seed. Stacking multiple crop protection products on a seed, as well as the required coatings to adhere them to the seed, can be limited by the available space.

Then, there is the need to test and adopt new technologies to get ahead of regulations – such as microplastic-free offerings.

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, there is compatibility. We do not want efficacy to suffer because of an unforeseen interaction between two of the compounds applied to a seed. So, compatibility must be tested for – and the more ingredients in a mix, the more testing that needs to be done. Some of this testing may be for ‘obvious’ effects, such as seed treatment slurries starting to gel or solidify after an incompatible component is added. But some might only be viewable under a microscope. The crystallization of compounds is one example – it’s not readily visible but could affect abrasion, flowability, plantability and ultimately efficacy.

Delivering holistic solutions that are as individualized and easy-to-use as customers expect, therefore, means anticipating and overcoming potential issues with compatibility – which can only be reliably done with thorough testing.

This is a complex topic, but I’m convinced that the solutions exist, and that they lie in a quality-first approach. In SeedGrowth, though we’re proud of every addition to our portfolio, our mission isn’t to put as many active ingredients as possible on each seed: it’s to find the best combination to address what is really needed. Our Acceleron® packages applied to our seeds are an example of this: above all, Acceleron is defined by its focus on adding exactly the seed treatment package that a seed needs to grow successfully. Nothing more and nothing less.

We take that ethos into the seed treatments we provide to all our customers. Often, we support them with enhanced testing: though of course we’ve tested all our own products individually already, we’ll additionally test them in combination with a third-party product that our customer intends to add.

Why do we do this? It’s in line with our ambition to be partners in growth. Our commitment to customers is: We are not just here to sell you a product and then walk away. We are in this for the long run. So we spend time getting to understand the needs of seed companies, treaters and farmers.

The result is that we have developed a strong expertise, which translates into an ability to systematically evaluate what the best solution would be for each customer, and to offer it in a flexible manner. Then, we make sure this solution lives up to its promise and delivers consistently and reliably. Our comprehensive testing, validation, assessment and improvement program, which runs through our headquarters-based application technology development as well as through all the SeedGrowth centers worldwide, enables us to do this.

Balancing the increasing complexity of seed treatments with a rewarding, convenient and issue-free experience isn’t easy, but it is certainly possible with a big-picture approach. Which suits us at SeedGrowth, because that’s how we are already used to thinking. For our business to be sustainable, we need long-term relationships with customers who believe and trust in our full portfolio and our recommendations. That’s why we have developed such an in-depth operation to form an effective ‘bridge’ between market demands and technical possibilities. And as we embrace integrated solutions even further, we’ll be ready to deliver even smarter ways of delivering and using seed treatments – mastering different challenges at once, and capturing more value for industry actors, farmers and fields.