history

In Edelhof we are breeding cereals for more than 100 years to serve agriculture!

Saatzucht Edelhof is one of the oldest existing cereal breeding stations in Austria.

By 1903 there had been a nursery garden for rye, oats and potatoes. Within five years an acclimatised variety of rye “Champagnerroggen” was established.

Technical Official (Ing.) Ranninger and later Privy Councillor (Hofrat) Dr. Prammer, started a breeding selection in 1908, which was rewarded in 1920 with the registration of the “Edelhofer Roggen” in the Austrian breeding book for agricultural crop plants.

On the 14th October 1965, the breeding book commission registered the winter rye, line 84, named “Edelhofer Neu” as a highly selected breed. So, after more than 40 years, a winter rye variety of “Edelhof” was put on the market again.

Subsequently, in November 1970, “Edelhofer Neu” was renamed “EHO-Kurz”.

In 1973 Saatzucht Edelhof started to work on spring barley and the first registration of a variety of malting barley took place in 1984.

Breeding winter wheat has started in 1976 and was intensified in the early 1980s.
During this time Saatzucht Edelhof also started to intensify its mechanisation.

1979 Ing. Konrad Schulmeister became Saatzucht Edelhof´s director. 

Since 1993 there is an intensive cooperation with a partner in Chile, where generations of all cereals we are dealing with are sown.
The region chosen is located about 700 km south of Santiago de Chile with nearly similar climatic conditions as in Austria.

Next very important thing for Saatzucht Edelhof was the building of a new house in 1996. As the company growing its premises had become too small and so the decision for a new business building was made.

In 2002 Edelhof began to breed winter oats and the interest in breeding sorts for organic farming increased with the rapidly rising number of organic farms in Austria.

There had been a great party in Edelhof on June 14th and 15th 2003!
We celebrated Saatzucht Edelhof´s 100th anniversary! 
More than 7.000 people came and were informed about our varieties and the work of a plant breeder!

Our house had become too small once more and so in 2005 a second storage building had to be built and had been finished in 2006.

In 2019 (finished in 2020) we built a new and bigger cold storage for our seeds.  

2022 we  realized new plans for our laboratories with modernizing and creating better working conditions.

Now in 2023 we are preparing our 120th anniversary – we will celebrate 120 years of breeding cereals at Edelhof in June!

Every year we are working on new varieties in winter wheat, winter barley, winter rye, winter oats, spring wheat, spring barley and spring oats.

Since our first days we are a cooperation that has to look into future and so we are working for future every day.

That is our success and that is – beside creating best qualitiy – our motivation!