Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 3
P
RIVATE
R
ESEARCH AND
D
EVELOPMENT
FOR
C
ROP
G
ENETIC
I
MPROVEMENT
*
Paul W. Heisey and Keith O. Fuglie
Seed
1
has been an essential input in crop production since the origins of
agriculture, when farmers first began to save grains for replanting and to select
seeds for desirable characteristics. The pace of crop genetic improvement
accelerated early in the 20th century with the development of applied genetics
and associated changes in plant breeding, seed production, and seed
marketing. The development of the modern seed industry began about this
time.
From the mid-1990s to the present, the private-sector seed industry has
probably undergone more structural change than any of the other agricultural
input industries covered in this study. Technological innovation in the form of
modern, DNA-level biotechnology and changes in intellectual property rules
have enabled private-sector companies to capture more value from the new
seeds they develop. In the late 1990s, research intensity (R&D spending as a
percentage of sales) in the seed industry accelerated past intensity in all other
agricultural input sectors, and seed remains the most research-intensive sector
to date.
