ESALQ is located in Piracicaba, a city with a population close to 400,000. It was created in 1901 and is one of the few centennial Brazilian colleges. Therefore, ESALQ is older than USP and one of its founding units.

ESALQ consists of 11 departments, 230 faculty members, 521 staff and offers 6 undergraduate and 15 graduate programs with 1,930 and 1,049 registered students, respectively.

ESALQ has graduated 11,178 undergraduate students and 6,250 (sum of dissertations and theses) graduate students since its foundation. In addition, more than 60% of Brazilian graduate professionals in Agriculture are former students of ESALQ. Thus, this College is considered the Brazilian college with the greatest heritage and traditions in agriculture.

ESALQ’s SEED TECHNOLOGY PROGRAM

Teaching and research in Seed Technology at USP/ESALQ are accomplished by the Department of Crop Science with the partnership of the department of Entomology, Phytopathology, and Agricultural Zoology. Supporting activities are provided by the Genetics, Biological Sciences and the Forestry Sciences departments.

The first activities toward establishing a seed program occurred in 1963 when a course on Seed Science was included in ESALQ’s curriculum for undergraduate students under the responsibility of Prof. Francisco Ferraz de Toledo. A natural outgrowth of this program was the Seed Testing Laboratory, inaugurated in 1968. In that same year, the Masters Program in Crop Science was established at ESALQ.

From that time, different events marked the evolution and consolidation of this seed program, such as the creation of new courses, the improvement of research projects, the invigoration of international academic interchange activities.

The participation of ESALQ faculty members, research assistants and students in events promoted by international organizations has been recognized and continues to evolve.

As a consequence, it is natural that ESALQ participates in the Consortium for International Seed Technology Training.