Individual seed protection vital as value and costs rise

Protection of individual seeds will be increasingly important going forward as the cost and value of each one increases as a result of advances in seed technology and plant breeding.

That was the message from Bayer CropScience’s Peter Stacey at a technical briefing to highlight the company’s recently introduced SureStart seed treatment initiative, which brings together advice and support on six key seed treatment areas, ranging from product selection, through quality control to product stewardship.

Assurance

Speaking at Agrii’s Finmere seed plant in Buckinghamshire, Mr Stacey outlined Bayer’s activities in the seed treatment sector.

In addition to manufacturing and marketing a range of seed treatment products, the company supplies and provides engineering and quality assurance support for more than half of the seed treatment machines used in the UK.

With almost all cereal seed treated nowadays and seed treatments costing up to £40/ha (£16/acre), it was essential they were accurately applied - too little active ingredient could mean the seed treatment would not do its job properly; too much would mean extra and unnecessary cost to the grower.

SureStart would bring together advice and assurance around seed treatment, said Mr Stacey. “The seed treatment process is just as important as the product.”

Agrii Finmere seed production manager Martin Vousden highlighted the intensity of the plant’s seed processing activity during a 10 week period from late July through to September, when 18,000 tonnes of the plant’s annual 25,000 tonne seed throughput were processed.

Speaking at the briefing, he urged growers to give careful thought to their seed ‘required by’ dates this summer.

"We cannot produce everything by September 1,” he said.

Stewardship

Oxfordshire arable farmer James Price, growing 445ha (1,100 acres) of combinable crops on Cotswold brash from a base at Woodstock, said with increasing focus on seed treatment stewardship, his aim was to get things right - from selecting the most appropriate product to calibrating the drill.

The value of seed treatments had been highlighted this year by the high levels of barley yellow dwarf virus infection in crops sown without an insecticide seed treatment, he said.

Commenting on this season’s widespread BYDV infections, Mr Stacey confirmed a significant increase in demand for insecticide seed treatments was expected this autumn.

Some 30 per cent of the harvest 2012 winter wheat crop was treated with a Deter seed treatment containing the insecticide clothianidin. This figure could rise to 40 per cent for harvest 2012, but Bayer had ‘got it (extra demand) covered’, he said.