Certified Seed Overview
Certified seed programs help ensure varietal purity, seed quality, and reliable performance for growers. Understanding certified seed requirements, brown bagging restrictions, and reporting processes supports responsible seed use and protects continued investment in plant breeding and research.
On this page, you’ll find an overview of certified seed programs and brown bagging, with links to detailed compliance guidance and downloadable resources.
Additional legal definitions and compliance information are available on the Legal and Compliance page.
Selling and trading protected seed is illegal
The Plant Variety Protection Act, PVPA, bars growers, elevators, and seed cleaners (conditioners) from selling or trading protected varieties of seed without authorization of the PVPA certificate owner — a practice known as brown bagging.
Consequences
All parties involved in the unauthorized trade of protected seed may be held liable under the PVPA. Liable parties can include the seller, the buyer, the seed cleaner, and others involved, including custom farming operators.
PVPA-protected seed use is allowed for limited purposes on the original purchaser’s farm
The PVPA allows farmers to grow and keep seed from PVP-protected varieties for use on their own farms. However, farmers should ensure that the variety is not also protected by some other form of intellectual property, such as patents, or contracts that may not replanting saved seed.
Choosing certified seed
Certified seed passes through rigorous field inspection and testing. When farmers purchase a bag of certified seed in Texas, they can rest assured the Texas Department of Agriculture, TDA, has inspected the seed production fields to ensure genetic purity and identity. Farmers can be sure certified seed will include many superior characteristics.
Certified seed benefits
- Purity ensuring consistent homogeneity and performance
- Higher yield potential
- Known germination percentages
- Better stand and biomass for grazing
- Higher end-use quality
- Lower disease incidence
- Lower weed incidence
- Superior yield, stress resistance, and improved quality
Certified seed risks
- Few to none
Understanding Brown Bagging
Due to lower costs and the ability to avoid ordering requirements, farmers may be tempted to plant brown bagged seed each year.
This seed reused from year to year will not be tested for purity, viability and vigor like certified seed is.
Farmers saving and replanting seed each year risk additional expenses as well as reduced quality and quantity yields.
Brown bagged seed benefits
- Lower upfront seed costs for planting
- No advance seed booking
Brown bagged seed risks
- Reduced yields
- Increased input costs
- Reduced end-use quality
- Increased storage costs
- Potential mix of unwanted seed varieties and weeds
- Reduced seed condition, quality and size
- Lower germination percentages
- Decreased seedling vigor
- Longer stand establishment
- Lower forage and grain yields
- Higher seeding rates
Brown Bagging Impacts on Breeding and Industry
Avoiding certified seed affects farmers’ crops and the entire industry.
Commitment of resources
The process of developing new plant varieties entails first selecting parents with desirable attributes, then crossing them and selecting potential new varieties from the crosses. Next are field evaluations followed by yield trials. Then purification, seed multiplication, and production must be arranged and carried out. All of this requires a commitment of time, cost, and labor resources. The entire process can span 12 to 15 years, according to CropLife International.
Financial support of plant breeding
About 10% of seed sales and royalties are typically reinvested into plant breeding each year. This means the development of new varieties misses out on as much as $68 million per year in reinvestment due to brown bagging, according to the Seed Innovation & Protection Alliance, SIPA.
Improvements to withstand changing conditions
Ever-changing growing conditions such as higher temperatures, increasing disease pressure and reduced water resources have made the need for the development of new, superior varieties more crucial than ever.
The U.S. wheat seed industry alone loses up to $677 million per year to brown bagging.
U.S. Department of Agriculture estimation, 2015
Reporting Suspected Seed Piracy
Report suspected seed piracy to
Seed Protection and Innovation Alliance, SIPA
or call 1-844-SEED-TIP
For additional information about protecting intellectual property,
visit Texas A&M AgriLife Intellectual Property and Commercialization.
