Due to their historic success in common wheat: the Cappelle varieties in 1946, Soissons in 1987, Cellule in 2012, Florimond Desprez is one of the top three in France’s straw cereal market, and clearly aims to strengthen their development in France and globally.
Florimond Desprez’ cereal strategy includes the expansion of their research programmes, with help from their breeding stations in Hungary, Spain, Morocco, and Argentina; participation in collaborative research programmes such as Breedwheat; as well as providing their breeders with the most up-to-date tools.
To this end, Florimond Desprez has invested 5 million euros in a cutting edge SSD (Single Seed Descent) complex at Cappelle-en-Pévèle. As a result, breeders will be able to register more varieties, and more quickly, in both France and globally. This SSD technique makes it possible to accelerate the breeding cycle during the first years after the crossing process, in order to shorten the time between the conception and commercialisation of new varieties.
Given the greenhouse’s capacity and the technological innovations of the SSD complex designed by Florimond Desprez, it is now possible to optimise the acceleration of the breeding cycle during the first three generations (from three years to 14 months), and to exponentially multiply the available genetic material to generate greater diversity.
At the inauguration on the 22nd of June 2016, François Desprez, Florimond Desprez’ Chairman, declared: “The SSD complex is proof that Florimond Desprez is investing massively in straw cereals, with the objective to both maintain its position as one of Europe’s leaders, as well as become a global leader tomorrow.”
Philippe Lonnet, Manager of the Protein and Cereal laboratory, added: “Thanks to the SSD complex, from 2021-2022 we will be able to commercialise a greater quantity of more diverse candidates, particularly for bread wheat, but also for triticale and durum wheat.
