Committed to higher yields

Elena Yudina, Almaz Agro SA
Published: 11 June 2020

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Many countries are facing big economic crises due to the rapid spread of the Covid-19 virus. Food supply has to remain unchanged, if not promptly improve, to keep on feeding the nations across the globe.

Major agribusinesses continue supporting producers and their agricultural businesses to sustain harvests, grain processing and storage and to further food supply. Our company is no exception. Almaz Grain Cleaners enables producers to process their crops on site, without any delays – maximising the quality of the grain supplied for food consumption.

Our equipment assists producers with their post-harvesting needs. The machine is able to remove the majority of diseased grain, grain affected by any type of fungus, insect-damaged grain as well as immature grain. It can also remove cocklebur (kankerroos) as seen in Photo 1 and separate all of them into one ‘clean-out fraction’ away from food quality grain.

Removal of cocklebur (kankerroos) from maize.

Some producers use Almaz machines to select the best seed for their planting purposes. A report from one of our clients using the Almaz MC-10/5, who cleaned three varieties of canola seed, indicated that the first variety gave 99% germination, while the other two presented an impressive 100% germination. Our machines not only improve the germination percentage, but select seed that has the energy to grow simultaneously to harvest, therefore substantially increasing crop yield.

The sample seen in Photo 2 was cleaned with an Almaz machine in a single pass from a supplied bag of already treated, cleaned, ready-to-plant seed. It is clear that the first class seed selected is the strongest seed that will produce the highest yield to harvest – 99,86%. Second class seed will have a 95,04% germination rate. The last sample of third grade seed is of a much poorer quality – even observed by the naked eye – with a germination rate of 49,08%. This is why cleaning and selecting the best quality seed to plant are so important in order to achieve the best possible simultaneous germination from seedling to harvest.

A treated wheat seed sample that was cleaned by an Almaz machine.

Our company is very proud to be sponsoring an Almaz MC-4/2 for one of the winners of the Grow for Gold National Yield Competition launched by Grain SA, where grain producers compete based on maize, wheat, sunflower and soybean yield results. Good luck to all the participants!