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Hand cleaning a pedigreed seed crop

When you are growing pedigreed seed grain you want the fewest weeds possible.

When you are growing pedigreed seed grain you want the fewest weeds possible.

The need for clean fields is that pedigreed seedis pure, true-to-type seed of a known variety, developed for a specific purpose, with seed purity refering to sample quality with respect to weed seeds, inert material (gravel, chaff, fungal bodies, etc.) and number of off-type seeds, as defined by the Canada Food Inspection Agency (CFIA).

For many pedigreed seed producers, including at the Jordon and Jennifer Lindgren farm near Norquay, sending a force out to ‘rogue’ the fields. In agriculture, roguing refers to the act of identifying and removing plants with undesirable characteristics from agricultural fields. Rogues are removed from the fields to preserve the quality of the crop being grown.

At the Lindgren farm 10-15 youth were out in the mornings going up and down the field a few rows apart from each other, picking to weeds and unwanted volunteer plants.