ABSTRACT
Niels P. Louwaars is affiliated with the Plant Research International, P.O. Box 16, 6700 AA Wageningen, The Netherlands.
W H Y SEED POLICY?
Seed is a primary input in agriculture next to land and labour. Seed has therefore been of primary concern to all farmers since the dawn of agriculture some 10,000 years ago. Only since the second half of the 19th century, how ever, seed has become an issue in agricultural policy development following the notion that seed quality and especially the genetics embedded in the seed are important determining factors for yield and product quality. This notion and the gradually increasing understanding of seed physiology from the first scientific publication on seed physiology by de Candolle (1832) resulted in the establi shment of the first official seed testing laboratories in the 1880s. In most developing countries, seed became the subject of agricultural policies only during the Green Revolution, i.e., from the 1960s onward. Seed was seen as an important vehicle for the dissemination of technology, both the technology embedded in the seed itself (the short-straw characteristic of rice and wheat), and the technology that accompanied the new genes such as chemical fertilis ers and plant protection chemicals.
