Seed labs provide important services to pedigreed seed growers and their clients. We rate lots and grade them so that those lots can be bought and sold.
Did you know we have a second important job, and that is to get everyone ready for planting time and help them get good plant establishment? Seed growers and their clients can use the information that they get from a seed testing lab to attain the best plant establishment possible.
Why is this important? In the age of climate change and precision seeding, optimizing seeding operations is crucial to establishing crops to achieve maximum yield potential.
P-R-O-F-I-T
At this time of year, it’s worth a refresher to know how seed testing can help get a crop off to a best possible start. Remember the acronym P-R-O-F-I-T.
Plant a GERMINATION to know the maximum mature plant establishment
Request a % PURE SEED test to determine % PURE LIVING SEED
Order a VIGOUR test to determine emergence mortality
Find out the variation in seed size and density with a 1,000 SEED WEIGHT test
Integrate a TETRAZOLIUM test for a quick estimate of viability or levels of dormancy
Test for SEED HEALTH and PURITY to determine what fungal pathogens and weeds could affect your bottom line
Pro Tip: Harness the Power of Information
Knowing the germination percentage of a seed lot is important for buying and selling that seed lot. When it comes to the use of that seed, there are other numbers that can really come in handy. A % pure seed test is a measure of the cleanness of seed, pure seed is separated from impure seed, and then separately weighed. Using both the germination and pure seed numbers can help you figure out an important number used to determine seeding rate — pure live seed (PLS). To determine the amount of pure live seed in a seed bag, use the following formula: % purity x % germination = %PLS.
Pro Tip: Get the Best Plant Stand Possible
Numbers on a seed testing report can help you figure out expected seed survival. Did you know you can use a pure living seed (PLS) number rather than a germination to get the most accurate number to attain good plant establishment?
Using the PLS number, you can find the amount of bulk seed necessary to plant at a recommended seeding rate. To do this, take the recommended seeding rate for your planting method and divide it by the percent PLS of the seed being used. The result is the bulk weight that you will need to plant per acre to achieve the recommended seeding rate.
Leverage the Power of 1,000 Seed Weight
1,000 seed weight is the weight, in grams, of 1,000 seeds from a random sample. It’s highly useful for calculating the optimal seeding rate for a given crop type or variety, and it can also be used to calibrate a seed drill as well as estimate yields. Plant stands are calculated based on seeding rate, 1,000 seed weight and expected seed survival (includes germination and mortality).
A seed lab can work with you to figure out an optimal seeding rate and start the season off with a good plant stand.
There’s been a massive shift from thinking about bushels per acre, which is a volume, to an actual 1,000 seed weight number. Using 1,000 seed weight to calculate seeding rate can help save on seed and plant it accordingly.
Ensure Success at Planting
It’s important to remember that things overlooked during seeding cannot always be made up later in the season. If you overlook something at the seeding stage, you effectively put a limit on the crop’s yield potential before the plants have even come out of the ground.
Our job at the end of the day is to make sure that things go as well as possible for seed growers and their clients. Yes, there are things that that are beyond a seed lab’s control, like fertilizer use and row spacing. But there are many things that we can figure out up front, including weed pressure, avoiding the introduction of new weeds into a field, as well as determining levels of disease pressure in a given field.
