SERVICES
Professional Seed Cleaning in Quairading
Locations in Bruce Rock, Corrigin, Dowerin, Perenjori and Quairading.
Seed cleaning is the most important farming practice today. It’s not enough to just run your seed over screens and get some of the weeds and chaff out. You need the quality grading that only a gravity table and experienced operators provide.
Heavier, better quality seed is more vigorous, grows faster and produces a bigger crop. Our gravity grading process removes only unwanted weeds and poor-quality seed from each load, ensuring maximum return of quality crop.
Research by the Australian Herbicide Resistance Initiative, published on Weedsmart states that over 70% of samples that have previously been cleaned (using various methods) still had high numbers of weed seeds present. Quairading Seed Cleaners doesn’t use augers, so you get a healthier, cleaner seed completely separated from the weeds.
Method
Our gravity grading tables are bolted to 250 tonnes of concrete using the fluidized bed principle to separate the large, healthy seeds from the small seeds and weeds.
- Deawning your seed removes awns from barley.
- Screening removes any items too large, like straw, and any items too small, like some weeds and nonviable seed.
- Indent machine removes any poor quality and non target seed based on it's length.
- Gravity table grades seed based on weight, so only the heaviest, most vigorous seed is kept for next season.
Mobile plants do not offer gravity grading. Gravity grading ensures the heaviest seed is kept, giving you a clean load of premium seed.
Advantages of Seed Grading
Removing weed seeds is vital to ensure that weeds are not planted instead of crop seed.
By having seed graded it ensures that you are not planting:
• Weed seeds – can be 100% removed
• Chaff, dirt and other non-seed contaminants
• Other crops are removed
• Frost affected and insect damaged grain are both lighter and are removed
• Seed that is damaged, shrivelled or unviable is also removed
Seed Grading
Seed stored for next year is cleaner, so there is much less chance of mould, valuable silo space isn’t being taken up by weeds and rubbish, and dressed seed reduces the stress about weevils and other insects. Get ready for next season with proper seed grading.
Clean seed makes the seeding process more efficient and yields better growth results. There are no blockages in the seeder, meaning nice even paddocks. There are no light, shrivelled nonviable seeds, no unwanted seeds from other crops and no weed seeds being planted, so none of these seeds are taking up valuable room and resources.
Premium clean, heavy seed is more vigorous and has much better emergence than light or small seed. This grain grows faster, stronger and needs less fertiliser to produce a bigger crop, saving you money on chemical. This seed is also better at outcompeting the weeds in the paddock and since no new seed has been planted there is less money needed for spraying and there are fewer chemical resistant weeds around. Seed that has been dressed also has a much better start in life as it is protected from insects and various diseases, so will produce a bigger crop.
Our Processing Plants
Our certified weighbridges can hold up to 100 tonnes, so weighing in is nice and easy. Our pits can hold up to 60 tonnes, making offloading a breeze. We don’t use augers, so your seed is handled gently in buckets and conveyors and is never contaminated. We can load your seed into bulka bags for easy storage of small volumes.
We make efficient use of your time.Our operators are always punctual, and you can have a cuppa in our air conditioned offices while your seed is being cleaned.
Why is seed grading so important?
Why is gravity grading so much better?
Gravity grading uses a really simple principle to achieve fantastic results, that is good quality seed is heavier than weeds.
Experienced operators assess each load for optimum grading, so only unwanted weeds and poor-quality seed is removed from each load. This ensures maximum return of good quality grain.
Our gravity grading tables are bolted to 250 tonnes of concrete, allowing the table work properly to get the required pattern to grade seed. Anything less than this and the table simply will not work properly.
The science behind the table; it uses the fluidized bed principle to separate items of similar size that have a different specific gravity. By tailoring airflow through the table, the grain acts as a fluid. As the table shakes this creates a pattern in the seed, moving heavy seed to one side of the table and light seed to the opposite side.
Why not use a mobile plant?
Grain that enters the gravity tables has already been through the same sets of screens and other machinery that mobile grading plants use. Although these processes are an important part of cleaning seed, the seed is not clean by the time it reaches the table. The seed is only clean once it has been over the table.
How clean is clean enough? Research by the Australian Herbicide Resistance Initiative, published on Weedsmart states that over 70% of samples that have previously been cleaned (using various methods) still had high numbers of weed seeds present. It also states that gravity grading is the best method to remove weed seeds, with samples being totally weed free. It goes on to state that farmers were alarmed by the number of weeds still in samples that had been cleaned by other methods, having not checked their seed and presumed it was clean.
Seed is prone to mechanical damage, lupins especially so. Advice from the Department of Agriculture is to not use augers on lupin seed for planting. Quairading Seed Cleaners can proudly say that no augers are used on seed cleaned in our sheds, unlike mobile cleaning plants that use two or more augers, damaging seed.
How does gravity grading increase yield?
It’s common sense that heavier seed does better than light seed. Heavy seed is densely packed with the nutrients and energy needed to grow and thrive in the harsh Australian landscape. The profitability of heavy seed is increased through faster and higher emergence rates, bigger seedlings, better resilience and more competitive against weeds. The effects of seed size have been well documented, with studies spanning decades across the world all concluding that bigger and more dense seed is better.
Studies have shown that seed size and density effects the emergence rates of a crop. Generally speaking, the larger the seed the faster the emergence and the higher number of seedlings emerge. This is vital in any commercial farming enterprise, because every seed costs money to plant. Every seed that doesn’t emerge costs money in planting, fertiliser, herbicides and pesticides and at the end of the season there is no seed for next season.
More dense seed, especially when sown at optimal rates, is more resilient. When clean seed is planted it is not competing against weeds, it is healthy and is less likely to spread disease throughout the crop. Dense seed is more robust, allowing it to survive climatic events and has more energy to outcompete any weeds already in the paddock.
Research conducted by the Department of Agriculture found that seed size and weight was important to seed development. Large seeds improve crop establishment and produce more vigorous seedlings. The research then goes on to advise that seed should be graded to remove the light weight seed and lists the ideal weights for different species of wheat. The only way to grade seed by weight effectively is using a gravity table.
Advantages of getting grain cleaned at harvest
Storing grain with contaminants reduces the seed viability for the coming season. Dirt and other plant material can cause mould in stored grain and research from the Department of Agriculture WA has shown that wild radish seeds release toxins during storage that renders surrounding seed inert.
Storing grain without first grading and treating it leaves the grain susceptible to infection and to pest infestations, lowering yield when planted. Seed dressing can protect seed from insects and disease in storage, especially when applied with our state-of-the-art seed coaters giving second to none coverage.
Gravity grading typically removes 10% of every load, including all weed seeds, but this detritus is being stored in valuable silo space. Being able to put clean, dressed grain straight into silos is a stress-free practice to be ready for seeding next year.
Advantages of getting grain cleaned at seeding
Seeding costs money. So, it makes sense to make seeding as economic as possible. Removing weed seeds is vital to ensure that weeds are not planted instead of crop seed. Planting weeds not only increases the weed seed bank on farm, but it also increases the population of herbicide resistant weeds on farm. Gravity grading is the only way to remove these seeds and doing so is much cheaper and more effective than trying (and failing) to control with later with expensive chemicals.
By having seed graded it ensures that you are not planting:
• Weed seeds – can be 100% removed
• Chaff, dirt and other non-seed contaminants
• Other crops are removed
• Frost affected and insect damaged grain are both lighter and are removed
• Seed that is damaged, shrivelled or unviable is also removed
By removing these unwanted elements from seed, it allows seeding to run much more smoothly. Due to the uniform nature of the graded seed there are fewer blockages during seeding, saving time and paddocks are sown evenly as intended.
Treating seed before planting gives it the best start and gives the best chances of a bigger yield and more profit. We provide a great range of seed dressings for every need, so please speak to your local operator today.