No. 4 September 1997
Edited by Thomas Björkman, Cornell-NYSAES, Geneva, NY
Published by Cornell Cooperative Extension-Yates County, Penn Yan, NY
Join the Northeast Buckwheat Growers Association!
Contact:
Thomas Björkman, Dept. of Horticultural Sciences, Cornell University,
Geneva, NY 14456
About 40 growers or prospective growers attended. Growers came from as far away as Johnstown, PA, Stoney Creek Ontario and Schenectady NY. For the first time we also had representatives from several buyers of buckwheat (Cliff Orr from Birkett Mills, Dale Weed from New Hope and Jack Kenney from AgriCulver); Extension field staff (Jim Capron and Nate Herendeen) as well as Experiment Station administration (Dr. Hugh Price, Horticulture Chair and Dr. James Hunter, Station Director). It is clear that the growers association is starting to draw more attention to the concerns of growers and to the crop in general.
More seeds, not more straw. Those
who attended discussed ways to get buckwheat off to a good start, but not
have it become overly viny.
For most crops, bigger plants make more seeds. With buckwheat that is only
true for very small plants. The figure below shows that plants grow well
enough to make just 1.5 tons of dry matter per acre can make as many seeds
as larger plants.
As the total growth incresaes, so should the yield. That
is true up to about a ton and a half of dry matter per acre. With bigger
plants, there is no relationship between palnt grwoht and yield. The vetical
axis shows the harvested seed yield in tons per acre (left) or bushels
per acre (right). The solid circles are data from central Neew York, open
diamonds are from North Dakota. Each point represent one field. All of
the data are for Manor buckwheat.
The problem is that buckwheat in high fertility soil diverts carbohydrate from making seeds to making more leaves and stems. Better varieties for the future should turn off the flow to new growth once the seeds begin to fill and direct it all to seed making.
Average yield of buckwheat in New
York.
The inability of buckwheat to shift growing energy from leaves to seeds
during seed fill means that increased fertility does not increase yields.
Yields in other crops were increased during this century largely by using
more fertilizer. That does not work for buckwheat. This problem with buckwheat
is now being addressed in the joint breeding effort of Clayton Campbell
of Kade Research in Manitoba and Thomas Björkman of Cornell University.
Cleaning buckwheat. Larry
Strickland, who receives buckwheat for the Birkett Mills spoke about
cleaning buckwheat at the field day. One important point is that empty
hulls look similar to filled seeds. Some loads come in that are half empty
hulls by volume (much less than that by weight). Larry is set up to clean
them easily, these loads mean unnecessary trucking for growers. The consensus
was that it the solution is to turn up the air on the combine and checking
the kernels in the bin to see that most are filled.
He showed samples of screenings that looked like good buckwheat from a distance, but the bags weighed very little. Squeezing the kernels showed that they were empty. The screenings weigh less than 10 lb per bushel, whereas clean grain is close to 50 lb. If empty kernels are just 5% of the weight in a load, they will be about a quarter of the load by volume!
If the harvested grain contains a lot of stems or weed seeds it is important
to bring them in quickly. Those impurities hold water, and moist plant
material heats easily. If a load gets hot, the buckwheat can spoil fasteven
overnight.
Overheating can also spoil the grain if it is dried with too much heat.
The inner seed coat should still be bright green in properly dried buckwheat.
One suggestion was to use lots of air, not lots of heat, and to keep the
temperature under 100oF.
New breeding lines were on display. The dry weather in July and early August kept the plants on the small side, but seed fill had just begun. One new line (BM91882.1) appeared heavily loaded with seed. It has the potential to set a big seed crop even if the plant is large. It performed very well last year also, and may be a candidate for release.
Self-compatible buckwheat has recently been developed, and could revolutionize buckwheat breeding by letting breeders use more efficient techniques. However, the drawback to self-compatibility is inbreeding. In the lines on display, inbreeding depression was evident as smaller, later-flowering plants. These lines are a good example of a strategy that will pay off in the long run, even though it does not look promising at first.
As a result of previous years trials, Manisoba and an advanced breeding line were tested in comparison strips on a commercial scale. The trial was put in by Stanley Van Vleet in Lodi. Seed of Manisoba is being increased locally for the first time under the skeptical eye of Calvin Rothermich.
Every grower gets a lot of hulls in their screenings. How much might they be worth? Unfortunately, not much. The only way to get clean buckwheat hulls is to separate whole kernels, dehull then, then remove the dust from the hulls. Sticks, buckwheat dust, pollen and mold are all too common in the screenings. These impurities would be very difficult to separate and they would ruin the pillows.
Buckwheat and health. Recent work has shown that buckwheat protein as part of the diet lowers blood cholesterol substantially. It is similar to the oat bran that was so popular a few years ago. The newest results indicate that a buckwheat protein soaks up the cholesterol in food, which is otherwise absorbed very quickly in the small intestine. Dr. Kayashita, a nutritionist at Hiroshima University, found that this buckwheat protein is not digested, so it carries the cholesterol out. Remember that when you go by the buckwheat fried dough stand at the Buckwheat Harvest Festival.
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