SPRING VARIETY SCREENING TRIALS
Cribit Seeds tests oat, barley and spring wheat lines from Eastern and Western Canada, and Europe. The seed for the majority of the lines being screened is provided by SeCan, a non-profit association providing members with top genetics. Only the best lines from all screening sites are entered by SeCan into the Ontario Cereal Crop Committee’s (OCCC) registration trials. Only after a line is recommended by OCCC for registration will it receive a variety name and appear in the Performance Trials.
Performance Trial results of all registered varieties are available at www.gocereals.ca
Management Trials
Cribit Seeds tests crop management practices and seed applied treatments. Testing different fungicide seed treatments on spring cereals has been a focus for the past five years. When fungicide seed treatments are used, an average yield increase of 5% is observed for both oats and barley.
True loose smut is a significant concern in barley. Annual counts of infected barley heads in the plots, from 2011-2017, illustrated that using a fungicide seed treatment provides a significant reduction in true loose smut disease. We find currently that Vibrance Quattro provides better control compared to other seed treatments.
Malt Barley Trials
From 2014-2017, Cribit Seeds planted malt varieties in small replicated plots. This effort helped to determine the efficacy of growing malt varieties in Ontario by managing a location and participating in the trials being conducted by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.
