{"id":1419,"date":"2016-07-10T18:02:22","date_gmt":"2016-07-10T18:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/seedproduction\/?p=1419"},"modified":"2016-07-10T18:02:22","modified_gmt":"2016-07-10T18:02:22","slug":"rain-grass-seed-harvest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/seedproduction\/2016\/07\/10\/rain-grass-seed-harvest\/","title":{"rendered":"Rain during grass seed harvest"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thomas G. Chastain<\/em><\/p>\n

The Willamette Valley does not expect much rain during harvest of grass seed crops.\u00a0 The production practices for grass seed crops in the region have evolved to take advantage of the dry conditions that are prevalent during harvest.\u00a0 But when rain falls during the harvest season, questions arise regarding the effects of this late precipitation on seed yield and quality of grass seed crops.<\/p>\n

\n \"Seed<\/a>\n
Aerial view of windrow harvested Willamette Valley grass seed field.<\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n

For grass seed crops that are at the pre-harvest stage during precipitation events, rain is usually not a problem and even after the crop is cut, the worst consequence is that the crop will take more time to dry down to reach combine seed moisture in the swath.\u00a0 However, if the delay in drying is too long, grass blades can grow up and through the swath making combining operations difficult.\u00a0 Tall fescue seems to be particularly problematic with regard to post-swathing leaf growth.\u00a0 When grass blades grow back up through the swath, some farmers recut the swath to facilitate combine harvesting but some seed losses can be expected in this operation due to shattering.\u00a0 If the crop is swathed onto wet soil and remains there for an extended period, there can be some losses in yield and quality as a result of the action of fungi and other pests.<\/p>\n

The potential for damage to seed crop yield and quality is dependent on the intensity and duration of rainfall.\u00a0 Excessive rain after the grass seed crop is swathed can be a problem, especially in July and early August (for later maturing crops).\u00a0 First, the action of the falling rain in some circumstances can be sufficient to cause shatter losses of seed in the swath.\u00a0 Secondly, if rain is persistent and is accompanied by high humidity, then seed can sprout, thereby reducing the quality and marketability of the seed.\u00a0 These late season high rainfall events are not very common and that is why the seed industry has few artificial drying facilities in the region.\u00a0 Pre-harvest sprouting of grass seed was observed in the Willamette Valley in 1983 and again in 1993.\u00a0 Light rainfall after swathing of the crop is not generally a problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thomas G. Chastain The Willamette Valley does not expect much rain during harvest of grass seed crops.\u00a0 The production practices for grass seed crops in the region have evolved to take advantage of the dry conditions that are prevalent during harvest.\u00a0 But when rain falls during the harvest season, questions arise regarding the effects of… Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2299,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[788175,788179,788176,788184],"tags":[3414,3418,3415,109093],"class_list":["post-1419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climateweather","category-grass-seed-crops","category-harvest-practices","category-seed-production","tag-climateweather","tag-grass-seed-crops","tag-harvest-practices","tag-seed-production"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/seedproduction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/seedproduction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/seedproduction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/seedproduction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2299"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/seedproduction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1419"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/seedproduction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1423,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/seedproduction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1419\/revisions\/1423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/seedproduction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/seedproduction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/seedproduction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}