Produce your own wheat, rice and pulse seeds

Note

Make sure you start with pure clean seed stock.
After three years, it is best to buy new seed from a reputable seed vendor.
Do not try to produce seed of cross-pollinated crops, such as maize or sorghum.

Save money by producing your own seed of wheat, rice, and other self-pollinated crops. Make sure you start with pure, clean seed with desirable characteristics, suited to your growing conditions and to your needs.

1 Lay out your seed plot so that the variety being produced is isolated from other varieties.

2 Before sowing, clean the seed drill properly. No other seed should remain in any part of the drilling machine.

3 Examine the seed plot at different stages of crop growth. Remove:

- other crop plants
- weeds
- off-types (plants with characteristics different from those of the variety being produced)
- diseased plants

4 Harvest and thresh the seed plot before harvesting the main crop.

5 Clean the thresher and threshing floor properly before threshing the seed crop.

Clean the threshing floor.

6 After threshing, clean the seed with a winnowing basket and remove small and cut seeds with the help of a sieve.

Winnow the seed to remove impurities.

7 Dry the seed to a safe seed-moisture level. Store the seed in a proper container.

8 To prevent infestation by insects, fumigate your seed with Celphos 1-2 tablets of Celphos will fumigate 100 kg of seed.

9 Before sowing, treat the seed with a proper fungicide. For example, treat wheat seed with Vitavax at 2.5 g/kg of seed to prevent the seed crop from infection by loose smut.

Store your seed in a proper container. Keep it dry, cool, and protected from rodents, birds, and insects.

Contributor: Dr. S. P. Sharma