QUALITY OF FARM SEEDS.

Colonist, Volume LVI, Issue 13470, 16 May 1914, Page 3

QUALITY OF FARM SEEDS.

During the sowing period of last year tho British Board of Agriculture caused an inquiry to be mad© into tlje quality of some of the more common kinds of farm seeds. The inquiry was directed mainly towards testing the quality of seeds that would be supplied to persons making their purchases locally, and 208 samples were procured, of which 168 were purchased by one of the Board's inspectors from 77 centres, and 40 were forwarded by farmers. Fiftysix of the samples consisted of seeds sold as English or Welsh red clover, 31 were white Dutch clover, 29 alsike, 10 sainfoin, 37 Italian ryegrass, 23 perennial ryegrass, on© cocks-foot, one, foxtail, and 20 mangold. All the samp'es of red clover contained dodder seed&/ and in 20 it was present in con- J siderable quantities; eight of the samples were analysed at the School of Agriculture, Cambridge University, with the following results:—Thirty samples contained both Chilian and European dodder, while 18 samples of white, and 19 of alsike clover, contained seeds of • "dodder. The. average real value of the clover seeds (as calculated by the formula employed at Cambridge University) was: For red clover 67.34 per cent., white clover 50.6 per cent., alsike 54.45 per cent., while out of the total of 116 samples of clover. ( seeds-1 analysed only 11 gave a real value of over 90 per cent. The average purity of the sainfoin seed was above 99 per cent., but owing to indifferent, germinaton the average real value of the samples of Italian ryegrass averaged 79.24 per cent., and for the samples of perennial ryegrass averaged 72.5 per cent., while the samples of cocksfoot and foxtail gave real values of 88 per cent, and 61.2 per cent, respectively. The samples of mangold seed gave an average germination of 116.45 per, cent., the highest being 191 per cent., and th© lowest 52 per cent.