Evaluating Wheat Seeding Speed Through the Research on the Farm Program

Faster speeds let you cover more acres per hour, but does this come at the expense of poor emergence or lower yield? How does it impact fuel use?

As a part of our Research on the Farm program, Manitoba Crop Alliance is addressing these questions by running a new trial to look at the impacts of seeding speed in spring wheat. Initial fuel use data from several trials has already been received. At most sites three seedings speeds were used: 4.5 mph, 6 mph, and 7.5 mph. Fuel use was tracked based on readouts from the tractor. Some preliminary results are already coming in. Higher speeds considerably reduce the time needed to seed a field as expected, but fuel use also appears to decrease slightly with higher speeds (Table 1).

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