Such rigorous testing and associated quality control procedures are expensive and follow an already costly development process. Novel endophytes constitute a patented technology, and should be viewed in much the same way as the herbicide and insect resistance genes currently incorporated in major row crops (Bouton and Easton, 2005). However, most grass seed is sold as a commodity product. Recent attempts to market newly released forage cultivars as proprietary cultivars have met with mixed success, due to market pressures to lower prices to meet competition from large quantities of inexpensive commodity seed. Introducing high cost technology products like novel endophytes will surely require a re-education of both seed marketers and seed users (Bouton and Easton, 2005; Bouton and Hopkins, 2003).

 

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