Testing the Mill Testers

Keep it unbiased, simple, efficient and repeatable = Increased confidence in testing results with David Brunton from The Adelaide University’s Weed Science Research Group 

1. Seed Terminator only uses susceptible Ryegrass for mill testing because it germinates with 90-95% establishment in the untreated samples. 
   
2. The same process is followed every time using a bench test stand. Weeds present in paddocks are patchy, the flow through a given harvester changes (difficult to standardise settings between machines), which in turn makes kill testing very difficult to evaluate in field with scientific rigour. In field analysis also struggles to differentiate weeds which have not germinated as a result of innate dormancy or seed kill caused by the mill.
   
3. Ryegrass samples will have different seed weights (like test weight), different moisture content and therefore require very different energy to kill. It is therefore critical that a reference mill is used in each set of testing to refer back to e.g. the Seed Terminator MY17, MY18 & MY19 mill technology will be tested side by side with the same batch of seed
   
4. Kill test only in normal winter growing season, mimicking everything in all of our treatments are what would normally happen in a field environment (if tested in summer, it may influence the results in a negative way) 
   
5. Michael Walsh independently evaluated the Seed Terminator and iHSD in 2017 albeit in field and found the Seed Terminator had 5 times less survivors than the iHSD 
   
6. South Australian Grains Industry Trust funded research conducted by Trengove Consulting in 2017 using a test stand found ryegrass weed seed kill was 93% at 2250 rpm and increased to 99% or greater at normal operating speeds (2750–3000 rpm). Results also showed more than 99% control of several other species including wild radish, brome grass, wild oat, bifora, bedstraw and tares and increasing chaff flow rate (harvest rate) did not reduce control of these species.