About this article
|
Hello Western Members, I know this is one of the busiest times of year for you but – now may be the best time to collect samples of clean seed lots. You may have heard about ZoomAgri (using high resolution digital images to distinguish varieties), as presented at our fall business meetings. The platform is up and running for barley now, and we are hoping they will be able to do the same for wheat. If successful, the test will be 97-98% accurate at identifying the percentage of seed in a seed lot. The test typically takes 3 minutes and would hopefully cost less than $20 per sample. So this will never replace the job of growing pedigreed seed where you work with 99.9% purity. However, you could use it to provide your operation with a reasonable cost test to make sure the hired help has not dumped the wrong truck in the bin! My hope is that we may also be able to use the test to determine % refuge for Midge Tolerant Wheat (lots of work to be done before this can be done but it would be a tremendous cost savings if it's possible). But to make this all possible, we need many samples of the current varieties being grown to calibrate the equipment – to compensate you, ZoomAgri will provide two complimentary variety tests per sample submitted. I was not a believer when I first heard about this technology but it works with barley perfectly! ZoomAgri has already launched this wheat solution in Argentina, Brazil, Italy and Uruguay. In total, they've performed over 600,000 analyses worldwide, and their largest wheat AI model can identify over 70 varieties. Send as many samples as you like – but limit it to one variety per year per location. The more variability we get (different years and locations) per variety, the stronger the model becomes. Yes, this means that you can send three different AAC Brandon samples from three different growing seasons. If you have multiple samples from the same variety, please send the highest pedigree from that season. What we need:
Yes, I do know that the CC# contains all the info we need, but the lab doing the tests will not know how to interpret all of it! Eligible SeCan Varieties: AAC Brandon AAC Wheatland VB AAC Starbuck VB AAC Westking AAC Stoughton VB AAC Oakman VB AAC Spike AAC Alida VB AAC Tisdale AC Stettler AC Carberry AAC Penhold AAC Rimbey VB AAC Westlock AAC Goodwin AAC Foray VB AAC Foremost Alotta Pasteur AAC Awesome VB AAC Paramount VB AC Sadash VB AC Andrew AAC Wildfire AAC Coldfront AAC Overdrive AAC Stronghold AAC Strongfield AAC Spitfire AAC Grainland CDC Defy CDC Wiseton CDC Vantta Send samples to: SeCan c/o Brad Pinkerton Box 1068 454-5th Ave South Niverville, MB R0A 1E0 204-792-1880 If you wish to use Purolator, please use ground and select “bill to third party” Purolator account: #9406495. Ideally, we would like all the samples before the end of June, but it makes sense to grab them now while you are handling clean seed for your customers. Test certificates will be sent by email. Please contact me if you have questions. Thanks in advance for your participation. Have a great spring season! |