skip to content skip to navigtion accessibility statement

New Zealand Journal of Agricultural Research abstracts

Harvesting, processing, and marketing Australian native
grass seeds

D. S. LOCH1
P. W JOHNSTON2
T. A. JENSEN3
G. L. HARVEY1

1Department of Primary Industries
P.O. Box 395
Gympie, Qld 4570, Australia

2Department of Primary Industries
P.O. Box 282
Charleville, Qld 4470, Australia

3Department of Primary Industries
P.O. Box 102
Toowoomba, Qld 4350, Australia

Abstract  A number of useful Australian native grasses have been identified for various situations: for turf, amenity, and ornamental purposes; for revegetation of mine spoil, roadsides, and degraded land; and as forages. Their commercialisation depends on developing appropriate seed-harvesting and processing technology, thereby ensuring that seed is produced in a form that can be sown satisfactorily and gives reliable establishment. While conventional header harvesters can be used with some species (e.g., Astrebla lappacea), beater and (especially) brush harvesters have been more successful with many others, particularly grasses with light, difficult-to-handle, chaffy seeds. After harvest, chaffy seeds can be processed to make their subsequent handling and sowing easier. Choice of processing method depends on the structural complexity of the dispersal units and on the particular chaffy appendages involved. Awns and sterile spikelets are comparatively easy to remove, with surface hairs and bristles the most difficult. Market acceptance, however, ultimately depends on the value that consumers place on convenience and ease of handling versus any costs added through processing.

Keywords  seed harvesting; seed processing; seed handling; seed marketing; Australian native grasses

New Zealand Journal of Agricultural Research, 1996, Vol. 39: 591-599

0028-8233/96/3904-0591 $2.50/0 (c) The Royal Society of New Zealand 1996

PDF file of entire paper: medium quality (785K); (scanned from paper original: notes about this process)

This year's abstracts | Journal home page | All abstracts | Publishing home page
© The Royal Society of New Zealand
MoST Content Management V3.0.3671