Cover Crop Seed Options

Sep 19, 2019

By Sjoerd Willem Duiker

Cover crops are becoming very popular to improve soil health and supply other services such as improve water infiltration, reduce phosphorus runoff and soil nitrate leaching, and provide grazing or harvested forage. Demand for cover crop seed is therefore on the rise. Farmers have different options – the most secure method is to buy cover crop seed from a seed company. Companies provide assurance of the variety you use and publish purity and germination on the seed label. However, some farmers choose to use bin-run seed from their own or from a neighbor’s farm.

If you use bin-run seed, you should do a germination test and correct for purity and germination. To determine purity, take a scoop of dry seed, weigh it using a kitchen scale, and then weigh it after you remove all foreign materials (weeds seeds, dirt, crop residue). Express purity as a % of the initial weight. Determine germination rate by taking a representative sample of seed from your lot and counting out 25-100 seeds. Include broken or shriveled seeds as they are also part of your lot. Take a paper towel, fold it in four, moisten it thoroughly and place it in the bottom of a plate. Put the seeds on top and place the plate in a zip-lock bag at room temperature. After about three days check the plate and tip it to remove excess water without opening the zip-lock bag (to maintain 100% humidity inside). After 8-10 days you count the germinated seeds and express them as a percentage of the total. To determine seeding rate you should divide the desired seeding rate by the % pure live seed to get the needed seed per acre. Pure live seed is the product of purity x germination. So if you have 90% purity (10% of the weight is foreign material or weed seeds), and 60% germination, your PLS = 0.90 x 0.60 = 0.54 = 54%. If the desired seeding rate of live seed is 100 lbs/A, you should plant 100/0.54 = 185 lbs/A.

Although some of the seed may carry scab disease this is not likely to cause scab in the following crop, so actually, planting poor quality seed may be a good use of bin-run low quality seed as long as you correct for poor germination. While bin-run seed can be used on your own farm without a problem, you have to make sure you follow the laws of Pennsylvania regarding seed sales. If you sell seed to another person you become a seed distributor and you need to apply for a seed license, the cost of which is $25 per calendar year. In addition, you need to get a germination/purity test done by a seed lab. The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture can do that for you for a $32 fee. You have to properly label the seed that you sell.

Source : psu.edu

Video: Why Your Food Future Could be Trapped in a Seed Morgue

In a world of PowerPoint overload, Rex Bernardo stands out. No bullet points. No charts. No jargon. Just stories and photographs. At this year’s National Association for Plant Breeding conference on the Big Island of Hawaii, he stood before a room of peers — all experts in the science of seeds — and did something radical: he showed them images. He told them stories. And he asked them to remember not what they saw, but how they felt.

Bernardo, recipient of the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award, has spent his career searching for the genetic treasures tucked inside what plant breeders call exotic germplasm — ancient, often wild genetic lines that hold secrets to resilience, taste, and traits we've forgotten to value.

But Bernardo didn’t always think this way.

“I worked in private industry for nearly a decade,” he recalls. “I remember one breeder saying, ‘We’re making new hybrids, but they’re basically the same genetics.’ That stuck with me. Where is the new diversity going to come from?”

For Bernardo, part of the answer lies in the world’s gene banks — vast vaults of seed samples collected from every corner of the globe. Yet, he says, many of these vaults have quietly become “seed morgues.” “Something goes in, but it never comes out,” he explains. “We need to start treating these collections like living investments, not museums of dead potential.”

That potential — and the barriers to unlocking it — are deeply personal for Bernardo. He’s wrestled with international policies that prevent access to valuable lines (like North Korean corn) and with the slow, painstaking science of transferring useful traits from wild relatives into elite lines that farmers can actually grow. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But he’s convinced that success starts not in the lab, but in the way we communicate.

“The fact sheet model isn’t cutting it anymore,” he says. “We hand out a paper about a new variety and think that’s enough. But stories? Plants you can see and touch? That’s what stays with people.”

Bernardo practices what he preaches. At the University of Minnesota, he helped launch a student-led breeding program that’s working to adapt leafy African vegetables for the Twin Cities’ African diaspora. The goal? Culturally relevant crops that mature in Minnesota’s shorter growing season — and can be regrown year after year.

“That’s real impact,” he says. “Helping people grow food that’s meaningful to them, not just what's commercially viable.”

He’s also brewed plant breeding into something more relatable — literally. Coffee and beer have become unexpected tools in his mission to make science accessible. His undergraduate course on coffee, for instance, connects the dots between genetics, geography, and culture. “Everyone drinks coffee,” he says. “It’s a conversation starter. It’s a gateway into plant science.”