28 GERMINATION.CA MARCH 2019 SEED CONDITIONING WHAT IT REALLY MEANS TO DISCONNECT Devon Ingo, Executive Administrative Marketing Director, Oliver Manufacturing devon.ingo@olivermanufacturing.com • olivermanufacturing.com WHEN YOU READ THIS, we will all be long back from our holiday vacations and settled into our “normal” work routines. However, the Christmas break was a great reminder of the importance of completely disconnecting to recharge your batteries. A few days before the office was to close for the holi- days, my husband asked: “Are you really going to shut down?” I didn’t give much thought to it at the time, but he later asked if I was going to turn off all the notifica- tions on my devices. I both cringed and reveled in the thought of turning my devices off and leaving them on the nightstand for a few days. I’m a fight or flight person so my mind never really shuts off. However, at the encouragement of my husband and the management team, I did. On the first day, I felt like I was missing something. My mind was still focused on unanswered emails, missed calls and social media posts that needed to be kept up, tracked and checked. On the second day, I was more in the moment, but my mind would still wander to the list of things piling up for me to tackle when I returned to the office. It wasn’t until the third day that I was able to mentally free my mind and really be in the moment, celebrating the holiday with my husband, family and friends. I wasn’t even tempted to sneak a peek at my phone during short drives or while waiting on others. Days four and five were more of the same. While my mind came back around to work while doing chores, I wasn’t stressed by the little things cluttering up my to-do list. The break was much needed — more than I even knew. I’m now working to incorporate dedicated times into my week where I give myself mental freedom, even if it’s just for two hours one evening or early one Saturday morning. Strategically disconnecting is working for me and it’s completely worth pursuing. What are you doing? I’d love to hear how you disconnect or find peace of mind and allow yourself to focus on the big picture. SEED TREATMENTS SEEM simple enough. You take the prod- uct and apply it to seed. They’re designed to be simple. But what happens before that product hits the shelf is anything but. If there’s one key to developing a seed treatment, it is collaboration. I manage our seed treatment research facil- ity here in Canada, one of five such labs that specialize in this area around the globe. Our research focuses a lot on the Canadian market and producer needs here in Canada. We are the first ones to see any new potential seed treatment active ingredients or formulations that may have potential use in Canada. If there’s a new active ingredi- ent coming out of Germany that needs to be examined for possible use in a seed treatment, it usually comes with limited information on effectiveness against the pests that are important to Canada. We test against our local pathogens and provide feedback to everyone who might potentially be researching it. It’s a very hands-on process. We do small screening protocols on petri plates with naturally infected seed. We also conduct soil screens, which involves planting the treated seed in pots and exposing it to a specific soil- SEED TREATMENT SEED TREATMENTS LOOK SIMPLE, BUT LOOKS ARE DECEIVING Krista Anderson, SeedGrowth Development Manager, Bayer Canada krista.anderson@bayer.com • bayer.ca borne disease. We maintain a small stock of local plant pathogens in our lab for use in the soil screens, and we do a lot of testing to understand specific diseases and how they work in the field, so our products can be more targeted and efficient. We work closely with our agronomic team who are in the field evaluating these actives and new formulations. We use a lot of data and analytics in understanding our new products. We explore and try to understand as best we can our actives and formulations and why they work or don’t work the way we want them to. Our SeedGrowth sales and marketing team gives us feedback on what they, and our customers, like and don’t like about our products, from pest spectrum, formulation type to application characteristics. We incorporate that information into the development process. Sometimes it’s as simple as tweaking colour or viscosity. But it doesn’t end there. I've written more on this topic! Visit germination.ca/category/germination-insiders/seed-treatment/ for more insights.