Interested in research results tailored to your farms unique growing conditions? Consider participating in the BarleyBin Field Lab.
Here are the answers to some of our most frequently asked questions:
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- These trials differ from regular strip trials as they are both replicated and randomized to account for any field variability and ensure confidence in the results. This makes the trials quite large, but having adequate data to properly analyze after harvest is crucial to providing you with results you can be confident in.
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- Customized Research: You get to trial a practice on your farm using your equipment, in your region and in your soil, and you’ll have access to a research specialist the entire time. This means that the analyzed data will be specific to your farm and farming operation — not adapted from a farm or research station miles away.
- Networking Opportunities: Join a network of like-minded farmers interested in on-farm, field-scale research. We partner with other crop commissions to host a field tour during the summer and a winter wrap-up results banquet. At this banquet, you will get first access to all the trial results. This means you’ll not only see your trial results and the combined results from all farms with the same trial, but you’ll also see the results from all other crop trials. These results will also be packaged in a booklet for you to take home.
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- All registered barley farmers are eligible to participate. If you have not requested a return of your SaskBarley levy in the past two years you qualify. SaskBarley is investing those levy dollars into this research.
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- You don’t need any special equipment for most projects apart from a grain cart with a scale, a weigh wagon and/or a calibrated combine yield monitor. Each project has an assigned agronomist to assist and they may have access to a weigh wagon. If you lack this equipment, we can discuss possible solutions.
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- We’ll be honest—it takes a bit of time, mainly during harvest, as each treatment plot needs to be harvested separately and weighed. Feedback we’ve received from past and current cooperators is that seeding and spraying are usually easy. We write the protocol in a way that will allow for that; however, we still need to take a bit of extra time at harvest to make sure that all your hard work and effort during the growing season are worth it when the final samples are collected.
- We also partner with other crop commissions to host a field tour in June or July including at least one field trial from each commission – if yours is chosen there may be some time commitment involved from you for this tour.
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- Signing up is easy! Registration opens in January each year when the sign-up form is posted to our website.
- You’ll need to provide a few things to us throughout the registration process, including field history, equipment, soil test results (if you have them) and your agronomist’s information.
- To ensure implementing the trial is as easy as possible for you, we will contract your agronomist to help with flagging during seeding, data collection, and taking samples during harvest. Our intent is that the entire research process is smooth for you.
- If you don’t have an agronomist, we can connect you with one!