FARGO, N.D. – Agronomist Phil Needham conducted his own field tests to see how well Dutch Industries’ seed brake worked before adding it to his retail catalogue.
He planted soybeans with a John Deere 1850 and set the 42.5 foot drill on 7.5 inch row spacing.
He installed a seed brake on every second run to obtain a good comparison without field condition variability. He seeded at 5.8 m.p.h. with the fan at 3,200 r.p.m.
His target population was 160,000 seeds per acre. The test was conducted this May in a conventional tillage field with four replications. Seed placed in the trench was counted three days after the seeding operation.
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Rows with the seed brake averaged 5.39 inches between seeds while rows without a seed brake averaged 5.35 inches between seeds.
However, those numbers do not take the extremes into account.
The real story is found in the standard deviation numbers and coefficient of variation numbers. In both measurements, lower numbers represent more uniform seed spacing while higher numbers indicate greater variation.
Standard deviation was 3.93 in rows with a seed brake and 6.04 without a seed brake.
Coefficient of variation was 74.15 in rows with a seed brake and 113.23 in rows without the seed brake.
The tests were specific to the Dutch seed brake, but Needham thinks most seed brakes will provide significantly better distribution and more seed into the trench.
