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Quality seed and soil are two of the most important farming inputs. High yields and good produce can be achieved only when soil and seeds are used wisely. For this it is necessary to test soil and seed to find out what needs to be added to optimize them. Seeds have been an important development in the reproduction and spread of plants, relative to more primitive plants such as ferns, mosses and liverworts, which do not have seeds and use other means to propagate themselves. This can be seen by the success of seed plants in dominating biological niches on land, from forests to grasslands both in hot and cold climates.

Seed production in natural plant populations vary widely from year-to-year in response to weather variables, insects and diseases, and internal cycles within the plants themselves. Over a 20-year period, for example, forests composed of loblolly pine and shortleaf pine produced from 0 to nearly 5 million sound pine seeds per hectare. Over this period, there were six bumper, five poor, and nine good seed crops, when evaluated in regard to producing adequate seedlings for natural forest reproduction.

Selection of the right variety of seed is extremely important when it comes to the cultivation of a crop. Different seeds behave differently according to the soil, climate, irrigation and other inputs of an area. A variety of seed that produces a quality crop and fetches a premium price in one region may be totally rejected in another region. This rejection may sometimes occur over districts and even through villages. Since, every farmer aims to get the maximum return for his produce, prudent selection of the seed variety is vital.