Role of private companies. The three private companies that are full partners will add an essential industrial perspective to the science and expertise in the NASSTEC training network. They will help ESRs (and their supervisors) to recognise and deal with key aspects of applied seed science, e.g. improved production processes, seed treatment and multiplication (SSE & SESIL), seed pre-treatments (SYN) and sowing. Mechanisation of all native seed production processes seeks to ensure industrial scale production that will increase market value and capacity for native seed production. In so doing, numerous barriers to the availability of sufficiently large quantities of native seed for habitat restoration will be removed. The only ER in the network will play a pivotal role in transferring knowledge to the European seed industry within and beyond NASSTEC. Already, crop seed priming underpins enhanced seedling performance in the field and similar work on native seed will have undoubted impact on seed quality. This and other innovations, driven by industrial needs, will result in the development of standard operating protocols and guidelines for industrial-scale restoration applications (SESIL, SSE and SYN in particular). Because of the potential commercial benefits of the findings in NASSTEC, appropriate IP rights and patenting will be developed and agreed.
B.3.1. Quality of the training programme
