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Seed testing key to improving crop quality

 
Farmers will want to start thinking about lining up seed tests for Spring seeding next year.
 
Allie Noble is a Crops Intern with Saskatchewan’s Ministry of Agriculture.
 
She says it’s important to know what you’re putting in the ground noting producers should be testing for seed-borne diseases.
 
"By doing seed-borne disease tests you're able to check for different types of diseases with crops," Noble said. "For oilseeds, you can check for blackleg, with pulses you can find out if there is any ascochyta, anthracnose, patritius or square artinya and then with cereals, you can check for feverion."  
 
Farmers may also want to start looking at getting a seed test done prior to Spring seeding.
 
"Producers can do a seed testing right now," she said. "That will give you a good idea and better prepared for the spring, but also if there are any questions about quality or if it was a rough winter, it's always good to have that seed germination test and have seed testing done in the spring too, just to make sure the germination levels have changed at all during the winter."      
 
Source : Discoverestevan

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Welcome to the conclusion of the Getting Through Drought series, where we look at the best management practices cow-calf producers in Alberta can use to build up their resiliency against drought.

Our hope is that the series can help with the mental health issues the agriculture sector is grappling with right now. Farming and ranching are stressful businesses, but that’s brought to a whole new level when drought hits. By equipping cow-calf producers with information and words of advice from colleagues and peers in the sector on the best ways to get through a drought, things might not be as stressful in the next drought. Things might not look so bleak either.

In this final episode of the series, we are talking to Ralph Thrall of McIntyre Ranch who shares with us his experience managing grass and cows in a pretty dry part of the province.