Jay NE Ohio - 3/1/2026 19:32

I was a seed dealer years ago. The seed companies can only produce so much seed and they have a pretty good idea of how much they have on hand in October. However, they don't know how much of that will get tossed due to poor germination test results until February. If reject lots are higher than normal, they come up short.

They then have a choice: 1)lower their standards and sell lower quality seed 2)Switch customers over to hybrids with good germ.

I've posted this graph many times. Back in 2005, I compared the yield results to the emergence and plotted the results from the 2004 OSU trials. For each 1% increase in emergence, the hybrids gained 2.22 bushel. So if you compared a hybrid that had an emergence of 90% to the same one with 94%, you would likely see almost 9 bushel difference. One hybrid in the data had an 81% emergence and was 40 bushel less than the average hybrid at 99% emergence

Emergence is generally related to the cold germ score. Anyhow, here is the resulting graph: