Effects of harvesting dates and plant population on sugar beet seed fractions

Abstract

The effects of harvest date and plant population on sugar beet seed size by fraction were studied in a three-year field trial after primary seed cleaning. The seed size was highly significantly affected by the different harvesting dates. The highest percentage of the seeds fell into either the 3.5-4.5 mm fraction or the 4.5-6.0 mm one. This indicates that in the three different climatic years the highest amount of large seeds was obtained with hybrids tolerant of sugar beet rhizomania. In most cases, no significant differences were found when comparing the different plant populations per hectare. Highly significant differences were found among the study years resulting from the influence of uncontrolled climatic factors of the agroecological region. This leads to the conclusion that seed sugar beet harvesting is the most important cultural practice affecting seed size in this crop during the production process.