Only if the quality of the seed and the pellets remains constant year after year can the genetically determined potential of a variety of sugar beet be fully exploited. Whereas the genetic characteristics are determined by the breeding, new seed and pellets have to be produced every year.

Multiplication in particular involves a wide variety of biotic and abiotic factors. As a result, the raw seed produced varies very widely in quality, and this may influence very strongly the yield characteristics that are typical of the variety. Strube-Dieckmann’s 3D technology takes all these dimensions into account at the same time.

Innovative analytical techniques are used to look inside the sugar beet glomerules (seed clusters) and pellets, identify relationships between the genetic characteristics and the seed quality, render visible any differences in the raw seed resulting from factors in its production, indicate physiological stress during ripening, control the successive stages of processing the product and monitor the quality of the pelleting. In this way, 3D technology optimises all the factors at all levels of the production process that influence the performance of a variety.
 

Some 4,000 tonnes of sugar beet seed are supplied to Strube-Dieckmann in Söllingen every autumn. The various varieties of sugar beet are grown on very different types of field in southern France and northern Italy, varying from one to five hectares in size. Vegetation and ripening are influenced by the climate, the soil and the methods of cultivation. Thus many different seed lots are created for each variety, which differ not only in their quantities but also and above all in their qualities.
This seed is then processed with the aim of bringing the very diverse seed lots up to a uniformly high level that will remain constant year after year.

Only a small proportion of the raw seed can be used for this purpose. And this has to be filtered out from among the rest. The 3D technology allows usable glomerules to be reliably identified and the various stages of the process of separating the qualities to be controlled. As a result, the farmer will always receive a consistently high quality of seed in any consignment of sugar beet seed from Strube-Dieckmann.

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