Disease issues can really hurt seed germination, making testing before planting very important.

Seed quality highly variable

A tough growing year has translated into seed that can have lower germ levels

Seed quality in Manitoba for the upcoming growing season is a mixed bag depending on the crop, according to Holly Gelech, manager of business development for BioVision Seed Labs in Winnipeg. The average germination of wheat seed tested from the 2016 crop is 86.3 per cent, down six per cent from the five-year high of

(Dow.com)

Agricultural merger mania fuels fears among small seed sellers

Chicago | Reuters — The U.S. Justice Department is looking into concerns that global consolidation among major seed and agricultural chemical companies may squeeze supplies of the building blocks for widely used genetically modified seeds, a farm group told Reuters. The department has asked the American Soybean Association for details about how small and independent


Actors Amelia Sargisson and Eric Peterson play playwright Annabel Soutar and Percy Schmeiser in “Seeds.”  PHOTO: HAANITA SEVAL

‘Seeds’ docudrama tells the compelling Percy Schmeiser vs Monsanto story

Annabel Soutar's play on now at the Prairie Theatre Exchange is thought provoking, nuanced and entertaining

account_id=”2206156280001″ player_id=”ryGLIkmv”] Monsanto Canada’s Trish Jordan (l) and actor Carey Lawrence who plays Jordan in “Seeds,” a play about Percy Schmeiser’s battle with Monsanto over patent infringement on at Winnipeg’s Prairie Theatre Exchange until Feb. 28.[/caption] The portrayal of several scientists is less accurate, making one out to be supercilious and two others as beer-swilling

A polar bear sculpture made of ice stands outside the Global Seed Vault in Longyearbyen at the facility’s opening in February 2008. The vault has been built in a mountainside cavern on Spitsbergen Island around 1,000 km (600 miles) from the North Pole to store the world’s crop seeds in case of disaster.

Doomsday Arctic seed vault to receive two deposits in 2016

The vault built to protect the world's seed supplied is built into the side of a Norwegian mountain

Two new consignments of crop seeds will be deposited this year in the “doomsday vault” built in an Arctic mountainside to safeguard global supplies. The vault — which opened on the Svalbard archipelago between Norway and the North Pole in 2008 — is designed to protect crop seeds such as beans, rice and wheat against


canola seedling

Making broadcast seeding work for you

Incorporation is a prerequisite to getting crop insurance coverage, as well as crop 
establishment that is equal to or greater than the farmer’s coverage

If you’re broadcast seeding it’s probably because the soil is too wet to permit conventional planting. But ironically, you’ll need more rain to germinate that broadcasted crop because of poor seed-to-soil contact. “Rainfall is important after because if the seed is on the soil surface you’ll need the rain to get it going,” Lionel Kaskiw,

Avoid losing half your crop before you start

On average, only 40 to 60 per cent of canola seeds put in the ground actually survive to become plants. If a grower spends $50 an acre on seed, typically only $25 of that seed survives to contribute to the success of the crop. Growers can use the following tips to increase seed survival, achieve


Ready? Set! – GO over this checklist before seeding

The first step in growing a profitable crop is getting a good plant stand established. There’s nothing worse than a poorly seeded crop, so it’s worth the time to make sure that equipment is ready to perform when it’s time to seed. Things to check before going to the field to seed: Hydraulic rams If

It’s time to plant pepper seeds

It might be difficult to start thinking about the outdoor garden since it still looks very much like winter. There are plants we grow outside, however, that must be given a head start if they are going to be productive during the summer because of our short growing season. Peppers are good candidates for seeding


The quest is on to improve rate of canola emergence

Canola seeds may be tiny, but they don’t come cheap. That’s prompted more farmers to use row-crop precision seeders in order to get more bang for their buck. There are many row-crop seeders on the market, but the problem is none of them do a perfect job, said Pipe-stone-area farmer Frank Prince, who offered his