The seed industry has matured over the years moving from conventional breeding of high yielding varieties by publicly funded seed companies and hybrids by the private sector to developing transgenic seeds using genetic engineering.

The seed industry now has evolved into a multibillion dollar industry, thanks to pioneering researches in biotechnology and genetics. It is now in a position to meet the demand of diverse agro-climatic conditions and intensive cropping systems. Key factors impacting on the agricultural product market are technology and policy, which also have profound influence on the seed industry as a high-tech industry. Great returns, enormous market, technological and policy advances have made the seed industry an eye-catching sub-industry in the agriculture sector.

This transition occurred within the last 10 years and the sector has expanded with the presence of more and more private sector seed companies. The intensifying international competition, shorter product life cycles for new varieties, increasing R&D costs and complexities of biotechnology and increasing concentration within the food processing and retail sector has helped countries such as India, China, Thailand, Indonesia and Philippines that are strategically positioned to become the hub of seed industry development.

Recent initiatives have been mostly focused on upgrading seed development technologies. In the context of the emerging Asian market, the questions that arise are:

• How to sustain the growth phase, address emerging needs of markets and leverage access to innovations through technology licensing and product delivery rights?

• Will pricing issues, regulations and protection of genetic resources continue to attract strategic attention of the key players in the sector?

• Will genetic engineering and privatization of seeds continue to be a major activity?

• Should the public sector work more aggressively with the private forces shaping this sector?

• What sort of public-private collaborations should be promoted?

There are several more segments of the learning curve that the seed companies have to traverse to emerge as a significant force in the global markets. Key benchmarks are missing and there's urgent need to provide this learning to the seed industry to help them evolve into global businesses.

The Seed Industry Program-2009, the third in the series, will focus on enhancing the ability of the participants to understand emerging issues and develop strategic solutions to augment business through deeper understanding of research management, technology access through licensing, regulatory compliance, market access factors and business restructuring.