By ANN HINCH
Assistant Editor

TIPTON, Ind. — By more than doubling its Tipton testing lab, Pioneer Hi-Bred International hopes to provide for a long future in seed testing and development.

Last week, Pioneer hosted an open house for its salespeople, customers and others to show them the $1.3 million expansion, consisting of 10,000 more square feet to bring the lab’s size to 18,100 square feet. Painted in cream and purple, it features many more windows and multiple overhead lights.

“We’ve tried to maintain some openness here,” said Gary Lawrance, manager of the Tipton quality testing department, referring to the physical area.

The work lab technicians do, he explained, is often tedious and repetitive-motion. This environment is partly to create comfort, but also to provide flexibility for future testing. In the lab’s 25 years, this is only its second major remodel.

“We’ll have tests three to four years from now, that we can’t even think about today,” Lawrance pointed out.

“You’re always planning ahead; you’re always looking ahead,” agreed Donnie Cerwick, lab manager at Pioneer’s headquarters in Johnston, Iowa.

Lawrance estimated 20 percent of the testing in Tipton goes toward company-wide research. The other 80 percent is quality control for corn, soybeans, wheat and sorghum seeds and seedlings. Two of the main tests are for vigor and electrophoresis, or genetic purity.

Electrophoresis requires accelerated germination for five days in a cabinet before the resulting sprouts are spread on a gel pack and charged with electricity. This test requires plenty of space for cabinets, and the results can only be read for a short period of time – since every step is limited to a certain time period, Cerwick explained it’s important the lab have the capacity to increase its testing each year.

Last year, Tipton prepared 2,200 gel packs of 100 seeds each; this year, he said it should be able to do twice as many. Overall, the new lab should be capable of carrying out 80,000 quality tests – including electrophoresis – each year.

The vigor, or “stress,” testing “is a big part of what we do,” according to Lawrance. “It’s the little stuff that really makes the difference to the customer,” he said, adding it’s the sort of testing that makes it possible to sell corn seed that a farmer can plant in a waterlogged field in 58-degree weather – and know it will grow.
Lab Manager Patricia Skiles showed visitors results of some of the vigor testing, by unrolling loamy-smelling seedlings of soybeans, wheat and corn. Under controlled conditions, they are subjected to cold, heat, dry, wet and other stressful situations to test performance. One test, accelerated aging (AA), has been developed from tropical climates to test how certain seedlings will mature in such conditions – increasing the area where they might be sold and planted.

Allison Larson, communications manager for supply management, said the Tipton lab employs about 30 people as well as other, seasonal technicians. This is one of six large central research centers Pioneer has worldwide (three in the United States), in addition to more than 80 smaller ones.

Jerry Harrington, PR manager for sales and marketing, reported Pioneer is increasing its test acres by two-thirds over last year as a result of the demand for more corn seed, and doubling the number of detasslers it employs.

In addition, parent company DuPont has diverted more than $100 million from its other ventures to invest into Pioneer. “What it does is help accelerate the rate of research,” he said. “Nitrogen utilization, drought tolerance – which is really of interest this year – insect resistance and new forms of herbicide resistance and disease resistance.”

Harrington explained in his 25-year profession, perhaps the biggest change he’s seen is the development of transgenic traits. “Before, farmers had to scout for insects and spray,” he explained. “Now, the plants do it for you.”

The rate of seed variety replacement in the field has gone from about every eight years to every three, he added, and yields have increased. He estimates a 1.5 percent annual increase in Pioneer corn yields alone. “We’re going into, I don’t want to say the ‘golden age’ of agriculture … but I’m very optimistic,” he said.

Because of the nature of the growing season in the northern hemisphere, testing work used to be sporadic by season. Lawrance said the lab now also tests for seed varieties used in the southern hemisphere and technician work is more steady than it was 10 or 15 years ago. By taking advantage of “a good worker base” around Tipton, he said this lab can take some pressure off Pioneer’s other labs and speed up the research and development process company-wide.

Pioneer’s testing facilities are ISO 9001:2000 certified, which means the company meets a series of quality requirements as confirmed by an independent, third-party auditor. Also on the Tipton Pioneer campus is a production plant for corn and soybean seeds, one of 28 in North America, employing 52 full-time workers and additional seasonal employees. Workers sort and shell corn, which is dried, sorted and bagged as seed, as is cleaned soybean seed.

“People just don’t realize, when you say you work at Pioneer,” said Bob Hartley, warehouse leader, outlining the necessary steps to fill, weigh, label and ship out crates of seed. “(They say) ‘Big deal; what do you do?’ I like to think we’re feeding the world. That’s what I’m doing, anyway.”

This farm news was published in the June 27, 2007 issue of Farm World, serving Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee.