How to treat peanut seeds before spring sowing? These points you need to know

The farming proverb says “around Grain Rain, you plant melons and sow beans”, and the busy spring plowing work is about to begin. Today let's discuss with fellow farmers the methods for treating peanut seeds before sowing, to lay the foundation for uniform emergence, full stands, and strong seedlings.

First, select good seeds and superior seeds, and classify the seeds. Many farmers have a very mistaken understanding when it comes to seed selection, believing that large, plump seeds are good seeds, but this is not actually the case. Continuous planting of any single variety in production will lead to varying degrees of variety degeneration. For this reason, for a good variety, at autumn harvest time, select some excellent individual plants in the field that can represent the typical traits of this variety, and pick, sun-dry, and store them separately, to prepare for sowing. Before sowing, they must also be carefully selected again. Furthermore, they should be graded according to seed size: sow the large seeds together, sow the medium-sized seeds together, and for seeds that are small, shriveled, sprouted, or moldy, resolutely discard them. In this way, the sown seeds will germinate uniformly, and there will be no phenomenon of large seedlings suppressing small seedlings, or large and small seedlings competing for fertilizer and water

Second, sun the seeds before sowing. For seeds with the peanut shells removed, before drying them, be sure not to damage the seed coat. Choose a clear morning, spread a layer of newspaper on the ground (not on a concrete surface), spread the peanut seeds evenly on it, and stir once every two hours. If the weather is good and the temperature is high, one day of sunning is enough, and they can be sown the next day. Treating seeds in this way can use sunlight to kill pathogenic bacteria carried on the seed surface, and can also reduce the moisture content of peanut seeds and increase the germination rate. According to surveys, this can make peanuts emerge 1 to 2 days earlier.

Third, chemical seed dressing. In recent years, peanut diseases such as bacterial wilt, root rot, and stem rot have broken out severely in fields with continuous cropping in main peanut production areas. Many farmers do not know to treat seeds in advance, and instead wait until disease occurs before starting to spray for control. In fact, by then control is already late, the control effect is not ideal, and production input is increased. Using chemical seed dressing is a method with small investment and a relatively ideal control effect. Use 50% carbendazim wettable powder at 0.5% of the seed weight for seed dressing, or use 10ml of Shileshi per 5kg of seeds, which has a very significant effect on controlling soil-borne diseases such as peanut root rot and stem rot.

Fourth, appropriately delay shelling or do not shell. Many farmers have nothing to do during the winter slack season and prepare peanut seeds in advance. In fact, doing so is unscientific. Shelled seeds are extremely vulnerable to damage, their physiological metabolism speeds up, respiration speeds up, nutrient consumption intensifies, they are prone to moisture and mildew, and they are also prone to mechanical damage, so the vitality of the seeds is damaged to varying degrees, which reduces the germination rate and makes it difficult to guarantee seedling quality. In addition, sowing with shells is also a good method to increase the seed germination rate.

In short, seeds are the source of all things. Good seeds alone are not enough; there must also be scientific management methods. The ultimate goal is to increase the germination rate, ensure uniform, full, and strong seedlings, and win a great harvest in peanut production.