Over the years, I have met several people who told me they once worked in both R&D and plant breeding outside an academic environment, and I have always found that combination intriguing.
In universities, government programs, and non-profit organizations, breeding and R&D are often carried out by the same people. But I’ve found that in private plant breeding companies those responsibilities are usually the domain of two different departments with little overlap between them. The position of these companies seems to be that if a breeder undertakes an experiment, they are wasting valuable time doing something R&D is there for.
That, to me, sells plant breeders short. Imagine you are a musician who plays the piano well enough to be offered a contract with a record company. Every time that company makes a recording of you playing piano, they sell millions of copies. But your talents extend beyond that. You also do a lot of experimentation with rap music only to discover that the record company has no interest in that. It’s not why they hired you. They want you to keep playing the piano so they can keep selling millions of recordings.
We see that same dynamic play out at private plant breeding companies. When they hire you as a plant breeder, they have zero interest in you doing anything else. I’ve experienced that firsthand. Every time I would come up with something innovative I wanted to try out, the company would come back with, ‘Okay, let’s go talk to someone in R&D’. So I would discuss my idea with someone in R&D who would then set up an experiment based on my idea. Instead of being permitted to conduct my own experiment, I was limited to testing the material R&D would send me and letting them know if I liked it or not.
The message was clear: as a breeder, I was most useful to that company when I focused solely on their intensive breeding program. It was critical that I complete three or four breeding cycles each year so that I could deliver a new variety in fewer years. That was all the interest the company had in me. Like a queen bee, I was there to breed. Nothing else. Research was the domain of R&D. I could benefit from their work, but I wasn’t allowed to conduct my own experiments, and that has always struck me as counterproductive for both the plant breeder and the seed company.
