Sugar Beet – a prime candidate…for priming

In the times of the Napoleonic wars, the sugar cane trade was blockaded out of European ports, catapulting Europe into growing beet for its sugar…Such was the strategic importance and value of sugar, and its desirability as a precious ingredient, that one of the world's most technically demanding crop saw the light of the commercial reality we know today.

Plant breeding improvements have long been recognised as major factors in yield progression in sugar beet, as in most crops. Sugar beet is however singular in its very early adoption of high performance fungicide and insecticide seed treatments, which have revolutionised the fight against pest and disease in an environmentally responsible way, and added many percent improvements to crop yields in the last twenty years.

Seed technologies, such as pelleting, improved planting performance to a high degree of precision, and state of the art harvesting equipment now ensures that best practice is used to get high root quality output.

Beet has increasingly to compete with cane as co-supplier of the world sugar markets. Lowering input and output costs and raising yields are a long established quest for the industry. A little help along the way to speed such improvements was on the horizon in the early 90’s and was soon taken up by some of the world most forward thinking markets.

Sugar Beet Seed Priming
A unique crop enhancement tool from Germain’s Technology Group

What is sugarbeet seed priming?

Seed priming works by activating the early stages of seed germination but stopping the process before the young root actually emerges from the seed. The early stage of germination started by the priming process is 'saved', and once the seed is placed in suitable conditions, the germination process continues from a more advanced starting point. Priming speeds up, or advances the germination and emergence of the seed in the field.

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