BENEFITS

• Yield & quality

Beside its role as a crop establishment tool, primed sugar beet has been proved to deliver tangible yield benefits, because uniform crop establishment and earlier leaf cover enable the capture of more solar radiation, a major yield booster, and the plant uniformity is translated to better shaped and sized roots, which are more efficiently harvested.

The most extensive series of tests has been conducted in the UK in 86 precision replicated trials over five years. The sugar yield benefit, measured over all trials, varieties and years was a statistically significant 1.05% sugar/ha. Trials in other European countries and the USA in the last decade have shown similar benefits, and average 1.2% sugar yield improvement.

Commercial experience suggests however that much more yield benefit is to be obtained from using primed sugar beet seed. In the UK, for example, user data suggests that a 4% increase in sugar yield forms the average gain. In Finland where yield is limited by short growing season length, but amplified by extreme day lengths in late spring and early summer, the effects of priming can return yield benefits in double digit percentages at commercial use level. In the USA, the improved crop establishment translates to an average 1.2 ton increase in root yield per acre leading to corresponding white sugar yield improvements of 3 to 6%.