How many send a sample away for germ test etc beforehand?
Thinking of home saving some seed this year was just wondering what people use to clean the seed before they sow??
Whatever you do get it tested for erucic acid!!!!
Why?
Mine is getting tested. £39 for peace of mind is cheap for 73 ha of FSS when you consider the possibility of rejection after next harvest. It would also eliminate or confirm whether farm saved seed is the cause of erucic acid problems if lots more people did this - unsurprisingly, the trade are blaming this as one of the possible causes. Yes, that includes the seed trade, strangely enough
What erucic acid level are you prepared to use as FSS and what will you do if yours fails that test at whatever level you are told is to high?
If yours passes this FSS test and then in 2019 the crop fails of erucic acid what will you do then? Any thoughts?
There has been a huge rise in rejections for erucic acid in recent years. The crushes are taking up to 5% erucic acid at intake even though the contract states max. 2%. There is a possibility that they may have to lower their levels at intake to 2% as the Food safety organisations are pushing it to be max. 2% due to it being dangerous to human health.
Farm saved seed seems to be a huge contributor to the current problem. Rapeseed naturally wants to revert back to its natural high erucic levels, several generations of farm saving can result in erucic acid levels over 10% and a heap of rapeseed that could be worthless......
Increased our future osr acerage after I'd sent our best seed to store. Left with seed that has cleavers in and was glyphosate-ed, will this be a problem?
You wouldnt normally roundup it, but this year i saw no evidence the crop took it in, a podsticked/roundup crop i contract harvested was 2% higher moisture than the untreated crop.
if you have never grown high erusic rape and pick a field with very little brassica weeds there will be little risk
testing that shows up high levels is very rare most rape if under 2 %
we had some a couple of years a go that was 3 to 5 % but the test was unreliable inaccurate then
I know a 3 % sample was checked on the longer more expensive but accurate test cam back at under 0.5%
the oil extracted was also tested at under .5 %
the problem for the food industry is the loads that are over 15 % due to previous high erusic rape volenteers