b'Todd, SeCan offers two products containing SGNTs.The second piece of this beyond the known Why did you begin offering these? genetics and the seed quality is royalty collection Both are soybeans developed publicly by Northand stewardship. Fortunately for us, around the Dakota State University in Fargo. Both productssame time we were looking at launching these, have been since registered in Canada and Plantthe Variety Use Agreement (VUA) was devel-Todd Hyra Breeders Rights (PBR) protection is in process onoped. Its a platform available to anyone that Westernboth. SeCan has a full portfolio of soybeans withwants to use it and provides both stewardship Businessnew technologies, including the Xtend and Enlistand royalty collection on these new products. Manager,E3 soybeans. From our practical experience, gen- The VUA, administered by Seeds Canada, allows SeCan erally, new is better. There was an opportunity,for royalty collection on farm-saved seed, which particularly in soybeans, because they providedis the important piece of this. It allows for contin-a value proposition for soybean customers whoued development, but it also provides traceability. face higher risk and may lose a crop with greater frequency due to a short season or extreme drought. Thats what our thought process was in thistheyre not going to give top-shelf perfor-mance, but theyre going to be good performers, and provide some risk management for individu-als interested in soybeans.WITH PRODUCTS GOING OUT UNDER THE How are you ensuring good stewardship of theseVUA, AS A DISTRIBUTOR, WE KNOW WHO traits? They offer a legitimate source of off-patent mate- THOSE CUSTOMERS ARE, AND WE CAN rialweve run across off-patent soybeans being sold with really no genetic backgroundCOMMUNICATE WITH THEM.or any idea of what they were. We also collectTodd Hyraroyalty off of the sale of these products so that we can encourage further development. There are two buckets when you think about product development with a trait. Theres the trait itself, and then theres the adapted genetics. These are RR1s that were talking about. In terms of stewardship, its important to have the strongestHow does the VUA help in this?performing RR1s you can, and make sure thatTypically with a cereal, for example, its sold and theres a will for developers to continue to investas a distributing company, we dont always know in doing something rather than just have themwho that customer is. But with products going float around for free.out under the VUA, as a distributor, we know An important piece of this is the productionwho those customers are, and we can communi-of pedigreed seedisolation, crop inspectioncate with them. If something changes in the mar- all of that helping ensure that the stewardshipketplace with regards to end use marketssay is off to a good start. Seed is tested for genetictheyre extracted from a particular key marketpurity to make sure that from a pattern per- we can communicate that and let the customers spective, were not infringing on anybody elsesknow that if we have to remove these at some patents, and that theres no presence of currentlypoint in time, that can be done.patented material in the seed of these expired products. JANUARY 2023GERMINATION.CA 41'