Seed Interactive… A Manitoba Crop Variety Decision Tool b y Pa m e l a d e R o c q u i g n y, P r o v i n c i a l C e r e a l S p e c i a l i s t , M A F R I
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A suite of tools are available to assist Manitoba producers with variety selection. The most wellknown, Seed Manitoba, continues to be a premiere source for unbiased, local variety information for Manitoba producers. Next came www.seedmb.ca, which hosts current and archived digital editions of Seed Manitoba. The website also has information of where the various Manitoba Crop Variety Evaluation Team (MCVET) trials are located and the detailed plot plans so producers can visit the sites and take their own notes on how varieties are performing during the season. The latest addition, SEED INTERACTIVE, A Manitoba Crop Variety Decision Tool (www.seedinteractive.ca), was launched in Spring of 2011.
FIGURE 1 – VARIETY CHARACTERISTICS REPORT
The Goal of SEED INTERACTIVE SEED INTERACTIVE was created to improve Manitoba’s grain producers’ competitive ability by providing them an online decision tool to help make variety choices for their farms. The biggest advantage of SEED INTERACTIVE is it allows producers to tailor output taking into consideration their own agronomic and management requirements. Crop types currently available on SEED INTERACTIVE include spring wheat (including durum), winter wheat, barley, oats, flax and peas. Spring 2012 will see sunflower (oil and confectionary) and soybean data added. And future editions will feature field beans, lentils, and fall rye.
Two reports available With SEED INTERACTIVE, you can generate two types of reports – a Variety Characteristics Report or a Yield Comparison Report. With both, one of the biggest advantages is the ability of producers to choose their own ‘check’ variety to make comparisons. In Seed Manitoba, both the long term data and the annual yield comparisons at various locations are compared to a ‘check’. For example, in spring wheat all varieties are expressed as a percent of the selected ‘check’ variety AC Barrie. However, what happens if you want to compare a variety that you commonly grow on your own farm to the newest varieties? This is where SEED INTERACTIVE can 12
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help as it allows you to choose your own check and make the comparisons you want to make.
Variety Characteristics Report The Variety Characteristics report is used to generate an overall performance summary using all data available for a select number of varieties that you are interested in. The Variety Characteristics report can be compared to the Variety Description Table currently found in Seed Manitoba and contains information on overall yield performance using all available data, disease resistance and general agronomic performance. However, it also contains other information not found in the guide. With this type of report, multiple varieties can be selected for comparison. However, caution must be exercised when comparing the generated relative yield performance between the multiple varieties. This is because the number of locations and years used to compare each variety with the check may differ. Let’s walk through an example for spring wheat.
In the Crop Type Category box, select ‘wheat’ and in the Report Type box select ‘Variety Characteristics’. Next you’ll want to choose your check variety. The varieties are divided into two categories – Most Commonly Grown, which represent varieties most commonly grown (by acres) in Manitoba over the past three years, or Current and New which either shows varieties that are relatively new and growing in demand, have just been registered, or at one point were popular in Manitoba but over recent years have fallen in popularity. Selecting a check from the Most Commonly Grown category will give you the largest dataset which increases the reliability of the generated report. For this example, let’s select ‘KANE’. You’ll then want to choose the varieties you want to compare....here only the varieties that have been tested in the same trial as KANE will appear. Let’s select the newer varieties of ‘WR859 CL’ and ‘5603HR’. Now all you need to do is hit ‘Run Report’. The generated data can be presented in several ways. The first report looks at the yield data, which SEED MANITOBA – 2012