Tray Cold Test Seed Spacing Investigation

Several dent corn seed lots commercially treated with fungicide and seed applied insecticides have expressed decreased tray cold germination test results compared to fungicide only treated tray cold germination percentages. One theory to the decrease in germination percentages is the concentration of insecticide experienced within the tray cold environment. Tray cold test spacing was investigated to determine if decreasing the number of seeds per tray would increase the cold test percentage to fungicide only treated tray cold levels. See Figure 1 below.

Figure 1. Tray Cold Test

Ten dent corn seed lots were planted with 10, 25, 50, 100 and 200 seeds per tray utilizing the standard tray cold germination method, 200 seed were evaluated for each seed spacing treatment. See Table 1 below.

Table 1. Dent Corn Treated with SAI Spacing Study

Little differences were seen in total tray cold germination percentages between the seed spacing treatments indicating increased seed spacing would not increase the tray cold germination percentages. SGS MWSS is continuing to evaluate possible testing solutions.

Amanda Patin - Research Coordinator