Bags of sunflower seeds sitting on store shelves or sold at sports events may all look the same, but not to Joel Schaefer. He has been a sunflower scientist for almost 25 years and directs the hybrid seed research and development program at CHS Sunflower.
The company, a subsidiary of CHS Inc., is the only major sunflower processor with its own breeding program, and it tests about 500 potential hybrids each season at its main lab and nursery in Grandin, N.D., about 30 miles north of Fargo.
The company is focused on confection sunflowers, which provide in-shell seeds for snacking and kernels for baking and roasting. It's a niche market, Schaefer said, and the research tries to please two masters simultaneously: the end user looking for flavor and value, and the grower looking for more efficient growth and higher yields.
"We follow a field-to-table concept," Schaefer said. "We breed the varieties, we contract with the growers, we clean the crop and process the crop, and then we've got a small roasting and salting business and a pasteurizing business."
Schaefer's role is to supervise a team of four researchers that breeds plants and grows them in nurseries. The company also has "counter-seasonal production facilities" in Chile, he said, so the program can use North and South American summers to grow two generations of potential hybrids each year.
"We are a specialty crop for sure, and we hang our hat on the fact that we are non-GMO," Schaefer said, referring to genetically modified organisms. "So all of the breeding that we do is based on traditional methods."
The company sends the most promising hybrids to a half-dozen select farms in Minnesota and the Dakotas to be field tested. Only a handful will ever be sold commercially, he said.
Two other major companies breed confection sunflowers but do not process them: Dow AgroSciences and Nuseed, a global seed company with its U.S. sunflower headquarters in Breckenridge, Minn. The U.S. Department of Agriculture also has a major sunflower and plant biology research unit in Fargo.