Judging by the number of germination tests Bernice Heck has conducted, farmers must be worried about the seed they plan to plant this spring.
Heck, a seed analyst with the Alberta Wheat Pool’s lab here, is getting about 350 samples of seed a week from farmers wondering about their seed’s germination. Normally she receives about 250 a week during February, the busiest month of the year for her.
“A lot (of the seeds ) are poor and certainly there are some that are worse than others,” said Heck.
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A combination of factors is causing poor sprouting. Many of the samples coming into the lab have high moisture and must be dried before they will grow. Germination rates of damp grain decline with storage.
Farmers traditionally see an 85 percent germination rate as the benchmark for minimum germination. This year farmers are finding germination 25 to 30 percent below that on durum, barley, oats and Canadian prairie spring wheat harvested last fall, said Ken Panchuk, crop development specialist with Saskatchewan Agriculture.
Two reasons
A combination of frost and damp, tough grain has dropped the germination level.
“It’s a double whammy,” said Panchuk.
He recommends farmers test germination before they clean their seed and again in the spring before they seed.
“Test again in April and if it drops, man, get rid of the stuff.”
Because bread wheat has built-in sprouting resistance, it is showing germination levels only 10 to 15 percent below normal, Panchuk said.
Heck said some seed will grow once moisture drops, but other seeds are simply dead. Usually, dead seed is caused by seed sprouting in the field. She said herbicide damage on seeds is also evident.
Wayne Walter has seen quite a bit of sprouted seed brought to the Westlock Seed Cleaning Co-op in northern Alberta. Once grain has sprouted, it won’t sprout again.
Mike Schultz, manager of the Ponoka Co-op Seed Cleaning Plant said while germination of wheat is below normal, it’s not going to create a crisis in his area of central Alberta. Normally, the germination of wheat is about 95 percent. Wheat this year is about 85 percent, he said.
Carol Topp, germination analyst with Saskatchewan Wheat Pool in Moose Jaw, said originally they thought there was a dormancy problem because of the high moisture grain sent to the lab, but now they think a lot of the seed is dead.
Marilyn French, supervisor of seed labs at the Sask Pool lab in the northeastern Saskatchewan town of Nipawin, said she was expecting the worst and has been pleasantly surprised that many of the samples have made the minimum germination requirement.
French said some of the samples coming in were harmed by too much heat during drying.
Harold Thiessen, manager of Central Testing Laboratories Ltd. in Winnipeg, is seeing a different problem in Manitoba.
Their biggest problem is with mould. He said germination has been fairly good.
High-moisture conditions needed to test grain samples are ideal for the growth of fusarium mould.
“The moisture conditions in the lab are ideal for that to take control. It kills the sprouts on the towels,” he said.
While it makes it difficult to get an accurate germination sample it indicates farmers may have a problem with fusarium next spring. Thiessen said samples of fusarium seed are also showing up in Saskatchewan and Alberta for the first time.
