By Dr. Ruojing Wang
This blog post was originally published to Cultivating Science on science.gc.ca.
Could you identify a plant seed out of hundreds of thousands of species, or tell the difference between the seed of a crop and an invasive species?
My name is Dr. Ruojing Wang, and I am a Research Scientist and the Head of the Seed Science and Technology Section at the Centre for Seed Science and Technology at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's (CFIA) Saskatoon Laboratory. Scientists at the Centre specialize in assessing seed or grain quality and in identifying seeds of crops and weeds. The Centre also includes the National Seed Herbarium, Canada's only reference collection of seed morphology for identification purposes – and one of the largest seed collections in the world. It includes over 21,000 reference specimens of plant species. The oldest known specimen, a sample of Larkspur seed (Delphinium bicolor), dates all the way back to 1869.
With a team of seed experts at the CFIA, we have developed the Seed Identification Guide®, a bilingual and online tool that can help anyone – including seed analysts at the CFIA and in private testing laboratories, as well as inspectors, botanists, farmers and landowners – identify seeds.
Continue reading to learn more.
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