Considerations for Slurry Ingredients in the New Age of Seed Treatment

Local and regional seed companies are focused on maximizing value to growers, and they work hard to get the best DNA in their seed. They also complement these efforts as well as get closer to achieving the genetic potential of seed through seed treatments. Growers, for their part, very much prefer the convenience of seed companies doing the seed treatment work: the expertise in the accuracy of applying treatments as well as the sheer volumes seed companies can handle typically push this level of seed treating outside of the scope and/or capability of the growers. Seed companies understand this important value to growers, and a lot of time and energy goes into delivering the absolute best technologies in their seed treatments.

Compatibility Issues

See link below for a Complimentary Checklist

Herein lies the challenge for seed companies. You take excellent ingredient A and combine it with excellent ingredient B, hoping for a superb treatment slurry, but the resulting combination could have unintended consequences. A lot of seed companies combat this through testing for yield as well as verifying a synergistic effect on yield. But even this often accomplished with small amounts of seed treated in a limited scope seed lab. The issue with this scenario is equipment compatibility is overlooked, and when the seed company scales up the seed treatment problems may arise in large-scale production. These challenges could include:

• Filter clogging
• Slurry buildup on equipment
• Non-uniform application of slurry on seed
• Excessive bridging of seed
• Dusting
• Or worse – some ingredients exhibiting poor performance or none at all

Even inert ingredients can suffer. Here’s an example: you take a pigment that is stable and develops well with components in a slurry mix but change one ingredient and the pigment all but disappears. The wet slurry may look the same but when applied to the seed the color may not develop or look faded. Another example: two antagonistic ingredients are combined that could result in the slurry kicking out. The slurry ends up curdling, gelling up and becoming nonworkable, or solids settle in the bottom very quickly.

Jar Tests

Almost all labels of seed treatment products recommend performing a jar test to verify compatibility of ingredients. This has been in practice for decades; however, the number of ingredients applied to the seed and total volume of slurry have increased to where jar tests can no longer be relied upon to determine:

• Equipment compatibility
• Dust control
• Elimination of treated seed bridging
• Ease of cleanup
• Plantability and flowability
• Germination and yield
• Resource: Seed Treatment Checklist

Seed companies can lower the possibility of these unfortunate outcomes working with a formulations chemist to perform accelerated aging studies on their seed treatment blends. It’s also a great idea to double check seed safety through warm/cold germination studies. Click here to request a complete checklist of items to analyze/verify before incorporating a new ingredient into a treatment slurry or feel free to contact our chemists at Kannar Earth Science.