Our mission at Harris Moran is to be the most trusted source of vegetable seed products to the professional vegetable grower. To accomplish this, we conduct one of the largest full-scale conventional breeding programs in the industry. Breeding better vegetable varieties is the very core of our business.

As a leader in the vegetable seed industry, we devote significant resources to our variety research and development programs. The focus of this work is good, old-fashioned plant breeding. Simply stated, that means our breeders make controlled crosses of varieties and lines, grow the new plants and select the best for further refinement and commercialization.

At Harris Moran, we’ve been breeding this way for more than 145 years and it remains the focus of our research activity. We so strongly believe traditional plant breeding will continue to be the basis for better varieties well into the future; we devote more than 85% of our research budget to doing just this.

Plant Breeding and developing new varieties is as old as civilization. In fact, some anthropologists contend that selecting better plant varieties from their wild ancestors is the basis of agriculture and the human skill that made civilization possible. Plant breeding has changed a lot in the last 8,000 to 10,000 years and for the last 14 decades, Harris Moran has done its best to adapt and implement these important improvements.

Today, hybrids are a significant part of the seed business and consistently deliver better food to consumers and better yields to growers worldwide. Over time, many other scientific innovations have led to the development of new and better varieties. A delicious example is Seedless (triploid) watermelon, which uses techniques for doubling the chromosome number in one of the parent lines and then making hybrid seed for planting use.

These and other scientific innovations have driven our industry in the past and will continue to drive the breeding of better seed varieties in the future. But as important as these scientific developments are, they remain tools to supplement the basic methods of plant breeding. Today, thanks to 25 years of worldwide development by public and private researchers, we have a broad new set of breeding tools collectively called biotechnology.

For the first time, these technologies allow Plant Breeders to work beyond the plant and cellular level, and to work directly at the molecular level.

Harris Moran and our parent company, Groupe Limagrain, will continue to invest in the development of all biotechnology. We will explore every new opportunity for use of these technologies in our breeding programs, products and markets. In addition, we will employ these techniques of modern biotechnology in our business as appropriate.

Today Harris Moran employs many advanced techniques to assist and improve the classic plant breeding work that is the core of our business. One example is the use of Molecular Markers to allow the identification of specific genes and plant traits. Our breeders use markers to assist in selection of new plant lines with important characteristics, our plant pathologist use markers to identify plant diseases and our quality assurance folks use markers to help insure the seed you buy is true to type - truly versatile and valuable technology.

Another technique is the use of tissue culture to develop new inbred parents. This allows our plant breeders more control over line development and allows the testing of new hybrid varieties faster and more efficiently. What it means to seed users is more varieties with the specific qualities they need for market success.

Harris Moran, like others in the seed business, has been conducting research in the very promising area of biotechnology for the last decade. Today, like many in agriculture, we have been surprised by the bitter debate surrounding one aspect of biotechnology, namely "transgenic" products (also called GMOs - Genetically Modified Organisms). This debate is now strong enough we feel the need to clarify our company’s position on the use of biotechnology and transgenes to breed new seed varieties.

As breeders, producers and marketers of new, value-added vegetable varieties, we believe the use of transgenic methods has significant value. As a tool in our breeding programs, this technology will aid in development of better food products and agricultural methods for growers, consumers and the environment. With appropriate care, we believe the use of this technology is safe and environmentally sound. We have full confidence in the safety of our research methods and in the regulations developed by the USDA, EPA and FDA to insure the safe use of GMO’s in the United States.

Harris Moran will only market transgenic products with full knowledge of our customers and in unison with all government regulations and the marketplace. We acknowledge that acceptance of transgenic products by Consumers, Food Distributors, Food Processors and Growers will be a key requirement in our decision to market transgenic seed varieties. Where valuable new transgenic products exist alongside different levels of market acceptance, we will organize our business to meet the needs of each market where economically feasible.

To make sure our customers receive the quality of seed they require, Harris Moran has implemented additional procedures to insure clear segregation and traceability of our seed products. This allows Harris Moran to comply with the increased legislative and market based standards for seed (including those for transgenic and non-transgenic seed purity) as a normal part of our business.

Through a comprehensive quality assurance program, these operational procedures address both the areas of Research use and Production use and provide for the necessary controls in order to maintain appropriate levels of seed purity.

Harris Moran Seed Company will respect and comply with all rules, regulations and laws regarding new technologies and new varieties in each country where we market or grow our seed products. Should Harris Moran not be able to comply with local regulations, we will not use or sell traditional or transgenic products that do not meet these specifications. Supplying seed that meets or exceeds all market requirements remains fundamental to your business and to ours.