Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52EUROPEAN-SEED.COM I EUROPEAN SEED I 33 More than 65% of European surfaces of sunflower is infected with the parasitic plant broomrape (Orobanche cumana), a dangerous parasite of the sunflower crop. This represents approximately 11 million hectares. It is an obligatory and non-pho- tosynthetic root parasitic plant that specif- ically infects the sunflower and is located in Europe and in Asia. The infected plants are smaller, the sunflower head diameter is reduced and in some regions, the losses in yield may reach up to 90%, dramati- cally affecting the profit for the farmers! The parasite’s mutation and spreading in Europe have accelerated during the past five years, and recently new and more aggressive races of the parasite have appeared, allowing broomrape to rapidly spread to new areas. Several methods of broomrape control are available with more or less efficiency. CEDRIC DELAVENT Sunflower Market Development Manager • Euralis CORN, SORGHUM AND OILSEEDS A solution in the fight against Orobanche Different crop management solutions can be used: soil solarization, biological control and the use of herbicides such as imidazolinone combined with herbi- cide-tolerant sunflower hybrids. However, breeding for resistance remains to be the most efficient and sustainable approach to control broomrape infestation. Genetic resistance to Orobanche is a very complex subject, especially when it concerns the new Orobanche races F, G and others. In the past, resistance to the parasite could be reached with a simple dominant gene, however, since the appearance of virulent races, the fight has become more complex. The resistance to these aggressive strains is due to a combination of a strong genetic background with a dominant gene. To help farmers in their ongoing fights against this pest, Euralis has recently developed the OR Master® App, which is KHALED RAED Innovation manager • PETKUS Technologie GmbH When a seed company is harvesting seeds which are to be sold to farmers and growers, there’s always a certain fraction of the seeds that is not of the intended quality. So the seeds need to be cleaned and graded into the right weight class. And often this is done with the help of a gravity table separator, separating the heavier from the lighter seeds. But with the use of conventional table separators, gravity and air are often insufficient to completely direct light products to the discharge. Mixing occurs and as such a middle fraction is created consisting of lighter heavy seeds and heavier light seed, called the ‘mid- dlings’. This fraction contains too many good seed to discard, but also too many undesirable seed/particles to permit blending it into the good seed fraction. SEED PROCESSING AND HANDLING Eliminating the middlings with uncompromising precision Until now there was no way around it. More or lesser amounts of middlings are always formed, and must be reprocessed to salvage the good seed it contains. The middlings fraction can be re-separated over the gravity separator to try and sal- vage the good seed. A re-run allows the middlings fraction to be spread out fur- ther over the deck surface and this pro- duces a closer separation of good seed from the undesirable material. But such re-runs comes with additional time and cost. In addition, the overloading of the table with problematic mid-range grain weights reduces the sorting accuracy and capacity. Recirculation during the sepa- ration process increases the stress on the grain and leads to mechanical damage. Consequently the middle fraction can only be seen as inferior quality seed. Recently we have developed an innovation that provides a 99.5% separa- tion into good seeds and bad seeds, and eliminates the need for re-runs. So the controversial question, "what to do with the medium fraction?" no longer exists. The innovation sorts precisely into heavy and light grains as the middle fraction is eliminated. The innovation that we intro- duced was that we modified the last third of the table surface. The new table lining has been designed as a zig-zag shaped ribbed construction, which increases the lifting force and diverts airflow to sort the heavy goods more precisely from the light. As a result, the heavy grains move upward as if they were on a staircase. Light and heavy products are clearly sep- arated and precisely sorted. It’s sorting according to the all or nothing principle. a unique smartphone application to fight Orobanche cumana. This new application allows the farmers to estimate the risk of finding Orobanche (OR) on their fields and helps them find the best OR resistant hybrids to be protected against the para- site. The risk estimation is based on the local agronomical context of the farm and the recommended solution is fully per- sonalized. The farmer can choose among different strategies using genetically Orobanche resistant sunflower hybrids, herbicide tolerant sunflower varieties, or a combination of both technologies inside the same sunflower hybrids in order to get the maximum protection. In any case, the application will advise a customized strat- egy fitting with the OR pressure and with the farm needs. The app will contribute to defending a sustainable profitability of the sunflower crop for the European farmers.