Before those treated seeds can be planted in a farmer’s field, BASF has to make sure they will germinate and grow successfully, and that is the job of Dr. Michael Merk – just call him “the Germinator.”
“We test all different seeds in terms of germination,” he says. “The germination is very important to see if there is any damage in terms of germination on the roots or any delays.”
Merk says doing the germinating in the lab as opposed to in the field speeds the whole process because it can be done quickly and at any time of the year.
Listen to my interview with Dr. Merk here:
basf-merk.mp3
View the Flickr Photo Album from BASF in Germany and Brussels
Our final stop at the 
Like everything else in BASF product development, quite a bit of work goes into creating treated seeds. “We are involved from the early development stage, from the research phase,” he said.
Okay, so if Dr. Speakman was excited about fungi, Dr. Christoph Kunast is simply buggy about insects. 
This is a guy who really loves fungi. 
“The mycologists estimate there are about 1.6 million fungal species,” says Speakman. “To date we have identified about 85,000 of these. There are about 8,000 plant pathogenic fungi in the world.” And can you guess what plant is the most impacted by fungi? It is actually grass – some 160 fungi can create problems for turfgrass and golf courses.
Dr. Speakman also demonstrated BASF’s new Stargate method of applying test compounds to plants. “It enables us to reduce the amount of compound being sprayed,” Speakman said. It also runs by computer to reduce human exposure to unknown compounds. I shot a little video of that which is being edited and we should be able to post here before too long.
Since our sponsor for coverage of this year’s IFAJ Congress is Pioneer I couldn’t help but post a picture of Jurii Mikhailov, Univest Media, Ukraine. Jurii was sporting his Pioneer t-shirt during our first full day of activities.
A main sponsor for the IFAJ Congress here in Japan is 
I’m back online here in Sendai, Japan on Thursday morning. It’s a beautiful day here. Cindy and I elected not to tour today. We were so exhausted by the time we got in last night that we needed some time to relax. Most of our IFAJ group is out on one of 4 different tours. They’re going overnight and won’t be back until late tomorrow night. We just couldn’t do it since we need internet access and time to work and none of that is taken into consideration in the schedule.
Making new compounds for crop protection is no overnight process and we got to learn a little bit about how it is done during our visit to the 
According to the President and CEO of 
The last of our interviews with