Farmers gearing up for seeding may wonder how important soil packing is to crops.
Research by the Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute offers some answers, especially on crop establishment and yield.
A three-year study, conducted by PAMI in co-operation with Agriculture Canada and Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, looked at the effects of openers and packers on emergence and grain yield in direct seeding.
The study also tested five different opener-packer combinations.
The research found that packing improves crop establishment in drier soil conditions, but that over-packing could hamper crop emergence in wet soil conditions, especially on clay.
Read Also
Farming Smarter receives financial boost from Alberta government for potato research
Farming Smarter near Lethbridge got a boost to its research equipment, thanks to the Alberta government’s increase in funding for research associations.
“There’s a bit of a flag up there,” said Gord Hultgreen, PAMI’s soils and crops manager.
In drier soils, packing improves contact between the seed and the soil. That gives the seed a better chance of tapping soil moisture, which helps crop emergence.
Improved crop emergence gives crops a headstart on weeds. It could also mean earlier crop maturity in the fall, alleviating the risk of a damaging frost.
Good emergence also improves the odds that a crop will mature evenly in the fall. Hultgreen cited malting barley as an example of a crop where an evenly matured crop is important.
Canola, spring wheat and field peas were included in the research. Field trials were carried out on three soil types: sandy loam, silt loam and heavy clay.
Effect on yield
But while the study found packing benefited crop emergence in drier soils, the effects on grain yields were less obvious.
In wheat, some amount of packing always brought a modest yield increase. The trials with canola showed there was generally no difference in yield that could be traced to packing pressure or opener-packer combinations. Meanwhile, the field peas generally showed the least response variability of the three crops to opener-packer combinations and packing pressure.
Hultgreen stressed that the findings of the study apply only to single-pass direct seeding.
“If you do pre-seed tillage, that’s a whole other ball of wax.”
The five opener packer combinations tested were: spoon-V packer, spoon-flat rubber, paired row-V packer, paired row-flat rubber, and a sweep followed by a pneumatic tire.
The research report concluded that the advantages between the various opener-packer combinations were minor. The report suggested that the differences are likely of little agronomic or economic significance to most farmers.
“To our happy surprise, just about everything works,” Hultgreen said.
Scott Day, regional agronomist for southwestern Manitoba, said he and his parents have adopted zero tillage on their 1,400-acre grain and hog farm north of Deloraine, Man.
He said the information in the PAMI report is useful but noted farmers must think about how the information is adapted to their operations.
“Soils respond differently to packing across farms and across fields. It’s a situation as diverse as prairie agriculture.”
Farmers also have to consider things like cost and the horsepower of their tractor when weighing their seeding equipment options, Day said.
In his area, more farmers are opting for a narrow knife with a steel packer when seeding their clay loam soils.
“But that’s in my area,” he said, underlining the fact that other areas may discover different results.
PAMI’s report Does Soil Packing Matter? is posted on its website at www.pami.ca. Copies are also available by calling PAMI at 800-567-7264.
