Does where the seeds you buy are grown affect how well they will grow for you? That’s a question Sidney Agricultural Research Service scientist Erin Espeland will answer during her BrownBagger presentation this Friday, Mar.1, from noon to 1 pm at the USDA-ARS Northern Plains Agricultural Research Laboratory (NPARL) in Sidney.
“In animals, we know that maternal nutrition affects how their progeny grow: in other words, the maternal environment affects the characteristics of offspring.” Espeland, a plant ecologist with NPARL studying reclamation issues in disturbed lands, said. “This is true in plants as well. In some species, plants grown under drought conditions produce seeds that do better in drought compared to seeds from plants grown in well-watered conditions.”
Consequently, it may well matter where the seeds you bought for planting were originally grown, she noted. “For example, you can buy seeds of the same Pryor slender wheatgrass grown in Washington state, in Saskatchewan, or here in Montana,” Espeland said. “Does the production environment affect the performance of your seeds?”
Espeland will discuss her findings Friday in a presentation entitled “Production farm location affects subsequent seed performance in Sandberg’s bluegrass,” during which she will compare results from Montana, Oregon, and Washington production gardens on the growth and competitive ability of Sandberg’s bluegrass. Her talk is open to the public and will be held in the lab’s Technology Transfer Room. We hope you will join us for this very interesting presentation.
NPARL’s 2013 BrownBagger series is held in the lab’s Tech Transfer Room on Fridays, from noon to 1 p.m. The lab is located at 1500 N. Central Avenue in Sidney, MT.
Remaining speakers in this year’s series include:
Friday, March 15: Robert Srygley, NPARL Insect Ecologist, “U.S. Agriculture in a Changing Climate”
Friday, March 29: Upendra Sainju, NPARL Soil Scientist; “Life-cycle assessment of dryland greenhouse gas emissions affected by cropping sequence and nitrogen fertilization”
For more information, contact Beth Redlin at 406-433-9427.
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