When you've invested thousands of dollars in seeds and your livelihood depends on the crops they yield, you want to be sure they germinate. Luckily, for a mere $20, farmers can check the quality of their seed, thanks to a team of analysts in Geneva, N.Y.

Providing purity and germination testing on more than 2,000 seed samples each year, the New York State Seed Testing Laboratory (NYSSTL) at the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station has provided nearly a century of service and continues to save growers and the state significant sums by preventing crop losses.

"If you test prior to planting, you can avoid crop failure or accidentally planting unwanted weed species into your fields," said lab director Kyle Arvin. "If you don't, and the seed never grows, you could be left with unanswered questions and an empty wallet."

Last year, the lab tested 179 different species of vegetable, flower, agricultural and lawn grass seed. New York is one of the few states to regulate flowers and contributing flower seeds to the lab for testing.

"What makes this lab unique is the diversity of what we deal with," Arvin said.

NYSSTL staff members can identify more than 325 species by sight. The laboratory also includes a herbarium with more than 6,000 species to use as a reference.

NYSSTL has been the official state seed laboratory since 1912. At that time, the big concern was purity. Weeds were making their way into seed batches sold to farmers, competing for nutrients and wreaking havoc in the fields.

Arvin and his small team of seed analysts still spend much of their time separating pure seed from other nontarget crops and foreign matter, such as rocks and dirt, and looking out for noxious weeds.

These days, germination is another main concern, so the lab conducts tests to determine if seeds will grow.

The tetrazolium test is a stain that turns respirating embryos red when applied to seeds. This fast way to determine seed viability is especially important in such biofuel crops as switchgrass and big bluestem, which are sometimes dormant.

The lab also performs such specialized tests as a cold test to determine a seed's ability to react under temperature stress, which can help the farmer prioritize which seeds to plant and when.

Arvin said the lab could offer other services, such as varietal testing, trueness-to-type testing and trait testing, but he is restricted by funding.

The laboratory used to run more than 8,000 samples per year, including in- and out-of-state seed, with 5.5 full-time equivalent employees, but it has had to cut back in recent years due to budget cuts.

With 3.5 certified seed analysts, the seed lab now limits itself to in-state submissions, testing about 1,200 service samples from industry and growers and 800-900 regulatory samples from the government per year.

New technologies, such as planting boards and vacuum planting, and advances in electronics and refrigeration allow germination testing to be more efficient. But it's still primarily an industry reliant on the skills of its people, and as much as the lab has evolved through the years, it still does much of the same work it did a century ago, Arvin said.

"The basics as to what we do are still the same: seed, water, media, light. The seed grows then you check it," he added. "As far as purity is concerned, it's still forceps, a magnifying glass and a person identifying the seeds."

Bethany Liebig is a writer intern at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.