Canola School: PAMI publishes guidebook on straight-cutting canola

Joel McDonald, Program Manager, PAMI

There is more and more and more demand for information about straight-cutting canola. In response to this demand, the Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute (PAMI) continues to conduct research, quantify assumptions, and provide knowledge to farmers. Recently, PAMI put all that work together into a straight-cutting guidebook for canola.

In this episode of the Canola School, RealAgriculture’s Dale Leftwich talks with Joel McDonald, project manager with PAMI, about the new guidebook on straight cutting canola. This newest publication focusses primarily on headers and whether shatter proof varieties are significantly better for straight combining than conventional varieties. (story continues below)

MacDonald says, “This guidebook… is a product of a three-year research study conducted by PAMI focussing on straight-cutting canola and the aspects of header selection and the variety you use and shatter loss that occurs, both environmental as that crop stands and matures, as well as during harvesting itself.”

About the headers, McDonald points out, “In Europe they’ve been straight cutting canola for as long as they’ve been growing it, and it’s catching on here in Canada so you’re seeing more of these headers are available here. They’re coming, the dealers are bringing them in because there’s demand.”

The study was not meant to tell farmers what specific variety to seed, but to quantify what people have simply assumed. “We kept the scope of the project not specific to a variety but more in terms of a category so, shatter resistant and non-shatter resistant. The findings of the study showed that the shatter resistant varieties reduced shatter loss during harvest. It seems silly to say but we were out there, we proved it, we measured it, and it worked.”

RealAgriculture has other Canola Schools on straight combining canola with information on desiccation, other considerations and more.

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