By Jonathan LaPorte
My grandfather used to say that there are two things about crop farming you have to get right: planting and harvesting. He’d say you can rescue just about anything in between. But you have to plant right to maximize yield potential and harvest right to maximize profits. There are a lot of things that go into both planting and harvesting. Planting right starts with choosing the right seed options for your farm.
Selecting the right seed for your farm starts and stops with profitability. You want to select two or three varieties that are adaptable and will maximize yields on your farm. When selecting varieties, the top two criteria should be yield potential, followed by disease resistance. You also need to consider the economic returns related to seed and harvest costs. Those costs include seed purchases, test weight, falling number, moisture shrink loss and drying charges.
New resources from Michigan State University Extension can help evaluate the costs of seed selection. A series of fact sheets titled “Seed Selection: Beyond Yield and Disease Resistance” provides a framework for measuring seed and harvest costs.
Source : msu.edu