WHILE you may not have heard of Tozer's, the chances are that you've either eaten something grown from their seeds or you have grown something from their seeds but packaged by one of the large packet seed companies like Mr Fothergill's. You may have even seen them at the Welsh Smallholder show this year. So who are Tozer's?

Tozer's, the largest independent plant breeders and seed merchants in the UK, have been in business since the early 1940s and cater for commercial vegetable growers. They are based at Cobham in Surrey where they have their laboratories, their main sales and dispatch centre, plus one and a half acres of glasshouses and some open land used for hand pollination of crops. They also have another site near Wisley Gardens, where four acres of tunnels are used for early multiplication of seed. The glass houses and tunnels being essential for the isolation of crops to avoid contamination at critical stages in the plant breeding process.

Mr Arthur Tozer, who had been a salesman for Watkins and Simpson (a big packet vegetable company at the time) in the mid 1930s decided to go it alone and with the help of the Thames Valley Growers, set up for himself. He won several RHS awards for reselected varieties but realised that to be a successful seed company he needed a plant breeder and employed Dr Dermot Dawson. When Mr Tozer died in 1952, the Dawson family carried on the business, which is still a family business today. When Mr Tozer first employed him, Dermot Dawson had been involved with a major research project on sweetcorn at the John Innes Institute, where they bred the first hybrid sweetcorn suitable for growing in England. Tozer's current director of plant breeding, Dr Frances Gawthrop, says, "Dr Dawson was a brilliant man. He was one of the first classically trained plant breeders in the country and, although I never worked with him, I was very privileged to meet him when I came for my interview and picked up the work he had been doing."

As you may imagine plant breeding takes rather a long time from the initial crossings (pollination) of two different varieties to having seed of a new variety ready for sale - especially in the quantities needed for the commercial growers and packet seed companies who are Tozer's main customers.

So how does plant breeding work. "Well," says Frances, "first of all you have to decide what you are breeding for. It may be improved disease resistance, improved yield or quality, better flavour, hardiness, or for many other things. Once that is decided, you take a number of parent plants that, from their different characteristics, you think may make a good variety, and make a number of cross pollinations. We then self pollinate these hybrid plants and evaluate the resulting progeny. Individual plants are selected and self pollinated a further five or six times."

Frances goes on to explain that "at each stage you get to in plant breeding there are a number of lines to carry forward. Initially there may be a hundred crosses and we decide that eighty of those are no good for what we want but we go on with the twenty and produce seed of those. Then we have another look at them and take those down to, perhaps, five or ten crosses and at this stage we would probably work towards a commercial trial."

Before trials can take place, the seed has to be multiplied to a point where there is sufficient to grow the variety under commercial conditions. At Tozer's this means firstly producing more seed themselves in polytunnels and once there is sufficient stock seed, sending it abroad for multiplication. This takes place at different locations in the world and needs to be done in an area that doesn't grow that particular crop to avoid further cross-pollination. Once enough seed is available, the commercial trial will take place with the variety being grown under field conditions. Finally, breeders and growers assess each variety and a decision is made as to whether or not that particular variety is to be introduced into the Tozer's range.

New varieties are introduced each year to the Tozer's catalogue but it still includes many varieties bred during the 1970s and 1980s when Dr Peter Dawson (current managing director) increased the innovative breeding for which the company is known. The world's first hybrid parsnip, Gladiator', was released in 1982, with the first hybrid celery, Victoria', being launched in 1991. These are still two major commercially-grown varieties. With around 850 varieties available from Tozer's, that's an awfully large number of plant breeding years invested in the company's products that have been specifically bred for the British climate.

By now you may be wondering how you can take advantage of Tozer's expertise if they only supply commercial growers in large quantities - well, in September 2007 they launched Tozer Direct.

Rebecca Dawson (grand-daughter of Dermot Dawson and daughter of Peter Dawson) told me, "The minimum quantities in the commercial catalogue are a bit too high for smallholders who might want to grow, say, four varieties of cabbage but, because of the quantities they are required to have, could previously only have one. We realised this was a problem and didn't want to lose this important market sector but needed them to be more easily managed within Tozer's and to give them a greater variety of our products to buy."

Tozer Direct still sells in commercial quantities but not such great quantities as the big commercial growers need and has introduced "collections" to the on-line catalogue. A collection might consist of four different varieties of a vegetable to give a longer cropping period, different types, different leaf shapes or different leaf colours. Most collections either have money off features (for example buy the runner bean collection for £13.90 - £15.80 when purchased individually) or may give you a free packet of seeds for a new variety.

Tozer Direct also gives access to two other Tozers divisions, Tools and Plant Solutions. Tools is fairly obvious and has all sorts of things to make life easier for the market gardener, smallholder or allotment society member, while Plant Solutions sells biological and natural pest control, natural plant extracts for improved growth and green manures with natural bio fumigation.

The latter was a new concept to me and Rebecca says, "Its called caliente mustard and has proved very popular on the website as its so easy to manage. You simply grow it as a green manure then, when it has reached whatever size you wish, you chop it up very finely and dig it into the ground - if it's been dry for a while you might need to water it after digging in to help the bio fumigation properties."

She went on to explain (the science bit), "The unbroken plant cells each contain Myrosinase and Glucosinolate separately and when the cells are damaged these naturally occurring chemicals come together in the presence of water and produce Isothiocyanate (or ITC), which is the bio fumigant. Two weeks later you can sow your new crop."

Rebecca obviously likes the product. "I've used it in my garden and its great and very easy to use. It's good for all sorts of crops but particularly good for fruit and potatoes and you can use it over quite a wide period of time. I've just got an allotment and I'm certainly going to use it there," she says.

Frances and Rebecca are obviously passionate about what they do but then so are many smallholders and market gardeners. Tozer's also sell to a number of chefs (Marco Pierre White, Raymond Blanc at the Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons and Jamie Oliver, to name a few) who as you know can also be passionate about what they do and wouldn't it be nice if, together, we could enthuse the Great British Public in their turn to be more passionate about locally-produced vegetables.

To find out more about Tozer Direct, Plant Solutions and Tools, log on to the website at www.tozerseedsdirect.com.