Registration is officially open for ASTA’s new Leadership Summit, June 25-29 in Indianapolis! Make plans now to send your team to a professional development, advocacy and training opportunity that will benefit your company and your industry for years to come.

For more information, including the latest schedule of events, visit the conference webpage.

 

 

The link is secure and the information will be used internally by the Texas Seed Trade Association and never shared without your permission. This request is on behalf of your association's board of directors and officers and we greatly appreciate your cooperation. Thank you!

 

ASTA will join partners in the agriculture, sustainability and equipment manufacturing community on March 21-22 in the heart of the nation’s capital to showcase the role of agriculture innovation in enabling sustainability.

 

The Association of Equipment Manufacturers’ (AEM) Celebration of Modern Agriculture on the National Mall will take place outside USDA headquarters between the Smithsonian Museums.

 

On display will be innovations including: combines, seeds, aerial applications, data management, in-field conservation practices, creative chemistry, and much more. All of the exhibits will feature the advancements that drive American agriculture’s long history of producing more while shrinking its environmental footprint.

 

 

Richardson Seeds International (RSI), a subsidiary of Nuseed, has been leading sorghum advancement since 1955. This team of experts relies on years of technical field experience and a keen sense of sight to use traditional breeding methods to advance top performing sorghum hybrids. 

 

However, not all sorghum traits can be observed visually. As a result, the breeding teams at RSI and Nuseed South America have also teamed up with the R&D team at the Nuseed Innovation Center in West Sacramento, CA to recognize important traits faster. 

 

The teams’ combined objective is to find and confirm specific gene markers in sorghum through a process called marker-assisted selection (MAS). MAS is when the desired trait is selected based on a genetic marker or DNA sequence and essentially takes the manual guesswork out of finding specific traits. “When choosing traits in traditional plant breeding, breeders are visually looking for plant characteristics such as height, seed color, and brown midrib. Genetic markers are key when looking for not so easily seen traits such as anthracnose resistance and sugar cane aphid resistance,” said David Drinnon, RSI GM. 

 

MAS helps mitigate field inconsistency impact on traditional breeding. “For example, if we are trying to assess sugarcane aphid resistance and there’s no heavy bug pressure that year and visual selection is difficult, we don’t need to wait for a year with high pressure to select for the traits,” further explained Drinnon. Genetic markers identify these traits regardless of them being seen in the field, dramatically increasing breeding efficiency. 

 

MAS starts with our breeding team taking leaf tissue samples when the plants are young and about knee-high. They use a leaf punch to put two leaf disks into a 96-well plate. These samples are randomized, and the plants are marked with orange tags for later reference. If the samples are being sent from Argentina, the leaf disks are dried first and then sent to California. If the samples are from RSI, they pack the well plate into a cooler with ice packs and overnight it to the Nuseed Innovation Center in California. 

 

Once the samples are tested, the teams review the results and discuss advancement decisions. The advancement meeting is held early in the season to ensure enough time to crossbreed the plants containing the specific gene marker to advance. Then they can harvest the crosses the same year and get them planted in the nursery. 

 

Our team is currently working to further advance sorghum hybrids with a selection of grain improvements and herbicide tolerance. While MAS is not new technology, it is certainly being used extensively, making a positive impact on Nuseed’s sorghum portfolio by using gene marker technology to continue to develop elite sorghum lines.

 

This article was originally published at Forbes.com.

 

Many agri-businesses and rural-facing companies work on shoestring budgets and keep their marketing and communications teams lean. In many organizations, one or two people are juggling every aspect of earned, owned and paid media.

 

The job description for a small-shop ag communicator may include designing brochures, producing events, posting to social media, ordering the company polos, assisting human resources with recruiting, creating sales presentations and “all other duties as assigned.”

So, when it comes to working with reporters, it’s easy for their leaders to take the public relations process for granted and ask their small-shop to “get this article in the industry magazine or newspaper right away.”

 

This kind of request can send a small-shop communicator’s head spinning!

Help your lean communications team give 100 percent when it comes to media relations with the four R’s of public relations: Build relationships, be relevant, get ready, and ensure your team rehearses and has resources prepared.

 

Build relationships with reporters before you “need” them. This starts with an up-to-date media list which is especially important with the ongoing consolidation in ag media.

A variety of subscription services provide contact details and press release distribution services. Several do a good job of staying current with job changes with ag and rural lifestyle reporters, so be sure your service covers your specific industry. It’s often best to segment reporters based on what kinds of content they would cover. In ag, most reporters and editors specialize in some aspect of the industry. You can also connect with these reporters on Twitter or LinkedIn.

 

A media relations agency is also a great resource. Agencies already pay the annual subscription fee for these reporter databases. Partnering up for media connections can be a time and resource saver.

 

Who cares? Segmenting your list of reporters also ensures you’re sending the most relevant content to the right reporter. A national news outlet does not care that you donated $500 to the local county fair, but your local newspapers do.

 

Why does this matter? Specifically, why does this matter to the media outlet’s audience? This is a critical question for small-shop communicators to ask of their leaders who are pushing for a press story. Have tough conversations about what constitutes trying to make news and what is clearly newsworthy.

 

Timing is everything. Many industry publications share their editorial calendars at least a year in advance. Use those resources to place your company in the spotlight when the editors are looking for specific content.

 

One of the biggest mistakes a small-shop communications team can make is not being prepared to communicate in a crisis. As a leader, support your communications in creating a company-wide plan and instituting training; don’t let it sit on the back burner.

 

Communicate together: There are two sides to crisis management; on-the-ground operations and communications. Ensure your safety/emergency operations team and communications teams work together to coordinate. Document and train a clear chain of command for notifying up the team hierarchy and a plan for communicating to all employees, customers, vendors and the community both in the short term and in the long-term.

 

Planning matrix: One of the best ways to draft content for crisis communications is to create a matrix of “most likely crisis to occur” and “most impactful crisis to occur.” Prepare draft social media, press releases and talking points based on a matrix created by a cross-section of your business.

 

Great news. Your small ag shop communications team has landed a stellar interview with a key reporter. The hard work is just starting because you need to train and prepare helpful resources for your reporter.

 

Key messages: Ensure you and your team are synced on a clear, concise message you want to resonate in the interview. It should be one to two sentences and be repeated often in your time with the reporter.

 

Pivot to your key message: You have just as much control over the interview as the reporter does. If you get a question that strays from your focus, answer the question but use a pivot phrase to move the conversation back to your main point.

 

Offer resources: According to Cision’s 2021 State of the Media report, more than 75% of reporters utilize images with their articles and almost 50% utilize video or infographics. Make your reporter’s job easier by offering images or photo shoot locales, an infographic or existing b-roll.