Gerry Devloo used to test canola samples for green seed the old-fashioned way, but he found it cumbersome.
“It started off when I was doing canola samples myself and found that the old system that everybody knows about very tedious and time consuming, and I figured that there has to be a better way.”
The old-fashioned way of getting a green-seed count includs counting, crushing, and calculating canola seeds by hand.
So Devloo took to the drawing board at his farm in Somerset, Man., and began producing prototypes of a small, hand-crank-powered canola crushers that evenly spread crushed canola seeds on paper for quick examination.
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“We manufacture it at home in the farm shop so far,” Devloo said.
“There were probably about seven prototypes before we came to a machine that was to our liking. We decided to make a batch of them and offer them to the market to find out what the interest is.”
Gerry Devloo holds a test he conducted with the Devloo Canola Crusher green seed counter at Canada’s Farm progress show in Regina. To the right is the gold award for innovation he won at the event. | Robin Booker photo.
It turns out that judges at Canada’s Farm Progress Show in Regina were very interested in the product, and they awarded the Devloo Canola Crusher the gold prize for innovation.
“You simply put a little sample of canola seed in the hopper and you give the crank four rotations. And what it does is it applies the seeds to the tape as it passes through the crusher. It counts out 250 seeds.
“And there you have your canola sample, already crushed and ready to examine for green count. If you want 500 seeds just give it another four turns and you have 500,” Devloo said.
The green seed canola tester is compact, and made out of aluminum, and retails for around $800.
For more information, contact Gerry Devloo at, gdevloo@xplornet.ca.
