Texas A&M Agrilife Foundation Seed

AgriLife Foundation Seed, located near Vernon, Texas, is a non-profit, stand-alone unit of Texas A&M AgriLife Research that services most of the plant material improvement efforts of Texas A&M AgriLife statewide. Operations are intended to be self-supporting by generating revenue through sales and services much as a commercial business would. Foundation Seed is an essential link between the public plant breeder and the licensee farmer or company. The original mission of Foundation Seed was to produce and market genetically pure seed of new cultivars developed by the scientists of Texas A&M AgriLife. Although the name implies it works only with seed, it is also involved with production and distribution of vegetatively propagated plant materials and works as a liaison between the various plant breeding programs at AgriLife and those companies that have an interest in licensing and marketing these plant material improvements. As a part of our duties, we handle business aspects of research commercialization in an effort to allow scientists to concentrate on their respective research projects. Foundation Seed handles revenues from seed sales and non-licensed products. All funds generated by the sales are used to support the effort of providing quality seed of new, high yielding, better-adapted crop varieties to the agricultural industry. Other services provided are production and/or seed conditioning services to public and private breeding programs. As a representative for Texas A&M AgriLife Research, Foundation Seed is very active in state, regional, and national seed organizations.