Opinion: Irish Seed Trade Association ensures top standards

The Irish Seed Trade Association (ISTA) is one of those bodies we hear very little about. And perhaps this is the way it should be.

The organisation acts to uphold the highest standards of seed certification and traceability.

For many individual farmers, this may mean very little at all, as they go about their everyday business. But they would be very wrong in making this assumption.

E.g., it turns out that ISTA is doing a very good job in helping shielding Irish tillage farmers from the ravages of herbicide-resistant weeds.

Irish Seed Trade Association

Part of ISTA’s role is to ensure that all seed imported into Ireland is full certified. This classification includes ‘zero tolerance’ of all weed seeds.

This is an issue that has risen in prominence over recent weeks, given the projected shortfall in home-produced spring barley seed availability next year.

In response, ISTA has confirmed that all additional seed brought into this country will be free of weed seed contamination.

However, the full significance of this commitment was put into a very clear context at the recent Teagasc ‘Grass Weed’ conference.

One of the presentations given at the event confirmed the role of impure cereal seed batches as a key vector in the spread of herbicide–resistant blackgrass across large swathes of England.

The last challenge the Irish tillage sector needs to be dealing with at the present time is the rampant spread of herbicide-resistant grass weeds, including blackgrass, Italian ryegrass and the various brome grasses.

Yes, this specific weed challenge is present in some parts of the country at the present time. But, hopefully, we are talking about infestation levels that can be dealt with completely, or at least, controlled effectively.

Blackgrass is now endemic in many parts of eastern England where its presence is wiping up to 2t/ha off cereal yields. And the scale of the problem continues to grow.