Every question about canola had an answer at the Lacombe Agriculture and Agri-Food Research and Development Centre last week.

Wednesday, June 27th was their annual canolaPALOOZA field day with more than 25 learning stations hosted by over 100 instructors, including Western Canada's leading researchers and agronomy specialists.

Program Manager for Applied Ag Services with the Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute (PAMI), Nathan Gregg, encouraged producers to check and manage their harvest loss with a new online tool called the Combine Optimization Tool.

"What it is, is basically an interactive flow chart to aid in combine setting," Gregg said. "This kind of walks them through the steps, kind of narrows it down by asking a few questions and then points you in the right direction of, if this is you problem, try this."

He said, the tool created by PAMI and the Canola Council of Canada will then ask if the setting change helped, and will direct you to a new solution to try if the initial setting change didn't reduce harvest loss.

The tool can be downloaded on your phone, so it can be used without an internet connection in the field.

Gregg added, it's important to get out of the combine and physically check for harvest loss.

"We always recommend that the best way is to actually raise the chopper up and collect the material discharge from the combine in a windrow as opposed to just out in the spread pattern. By doing that, you concentrate all the losses from your cut width into the discharge and you collect it in the pan, so you've got a really good snapshot as opposed as if you collect it from the residue pattern, you can't guarantee that distribution is uniform and that you'll get a concentration of seeds in one spot that isn't representative."

He says, sometimes you need to leave a bit of horsepower in the reserve, as 90 per cent of harvest loss is from driving the combine too fast.

To view the online tool, you can visit the Canola Council of Canada website.

 

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