Starts with the Seed
By Eric Sfiligoj, Editor, CropLife
As anyone involved in the agricultural marketplace will tell you, the seed is the starting point for all decisions. Deciding which types of seed to plant begins a domino process leading to all other decisions for that growing seasons which ends in the crop harvest.
And planting healthy seeds is the key to raising healthy crops, says Prabdeep Bajwa, Vice President, Seed Applied Technologies Portfolio at Corteva Agriscience. “Farmers continue to face numerous challenges in producing healthy crops and seed treatments remain an essential tool that enables more sustainable and economical farming,” says Bajwa. “They help farmers ‘Win the Start’ so that their seed develops into healthy plants that can deliver their full genetic potential.”
Vince Wertman, Technical Sales Manager North America for Agrauxine North America, agrees with this assessment.
“When you think about seeding and placing seed in the ground and the yield potential we have, I go back to concept of livestock,” says Wertman.
“Once a runt, always a runt. We look at seed care as helping the seed, from when it goes into the ground to emergence is vital to what we end up at the end of the year in the bin. We want to start with vigor and maintain that yield potential until it comes up out of the ground.”
“Early season insects can feed on soybean seedlings causing plant injury, stunting, delayed emergence or stand loss,” said Dale Ireland.
And when it comes to seed, there are lots of potential yield threats that need to be dealt with each and every growing season. On the diseases side, pythium and phytophthora can take a tool. In fact, according to 36 university Extension plant pathologists, seedling diseases in soybeans negatively affect 47 million bushels and 25 million bushels each year, respectively. Other diseases such as rhizoctonia and fusarium also can take a tool.
Then there are insects. “Early season insects can feed on soybean seedlings causing plant injury, stunting, delayed emergence or stand loss,” said Dale Ireland, Seedcare Tech Product Lead at Syngenta, speaking at the company’s Media Summit in October. “For example, cumulative consumption of seedling shoot tissue by adult bean leaf beetles can reduce yield by 12%.”
Luckily, most ag retailers and their grower-customers have recognized these facts regarding plant health starting with proper seed care. As Agrauxine’s Wertman observes, attitudes have changed significantly on this topic over the past 20 years or so.
“There are a couple of different factors involved here,” he says. “The first is the integration of computer power that we’ve had. So, think about the way we seeded the crop 20 years ago vs. today. The majority of the crop seeded back in 2003-04, we were just on the cusp of autosteer and GPS technology. Before that, we really weren’t able to see the crop 24/7. But today, using these technologies, we are able to position seed around the field at all hours of the clock. That has moved the grower towards options that tend to lean towards convenience. They want to keep that planter moving throughout that time.”
This is where the convenience of applying products to the seed itself has come into play, he adds.
“In seed care these past 20 years, we’ve really moved towards solutions that are convenient to the grower,” says Wertman.
“We can deliver fungicides, insecticides, control for sudden death syndrome, and even some nutrient products on the seed so that the plant gets up and out of the ground with a healthy start. But it all goes back to grower convenience. If it’s not convenient for the grower, they are not going to do it. And putting all of these products on the seed rather than having to do multiple passes through the field is very convenient.”
