Ecological restoration of rangelands using wild-collected seeds can be challenging for land managers in many parts of the world. Difficulties due to low seed quality, inconvenient seed anatomy, and poor seed establishment are some of the major factors contributing to restoration failure. In rangelands of North America, the half-shrub winterfat (Krascheninnikovia lanata (Pursh) A. Meeuse & Smit) is a valuable protein-rich forage for wildlife and livestock, particularly during the fall and winter period. Seeds are contained in one-seeded fruits enclosed in four silky bracts. While the seeds can be removed from the bracts through cleaning it is not recommended; the bracts are thought to help protect the radicle region of the seed and aid in seed germination and early seedling growth. However, fluffy bracts of winterfat make it difficult to incorporate the seed at any significant level within a seed mix because it can prevent the seed from flowing from mechanized seeders. Additionally, fluffy bracts limit the ability of seed pretreatments to be applied, such as a seed coating. Our goal was to evaluate a recently developed seed cleaning technique on winterfat that uses �flash flaming� to remove seed appendages. We demonstrate how flash flaming can be used to improve the geometry of the seed without impacting seed germination. Cleaning winterfat seeds through �flash flaming� allows the seeds to be distributed through a broadcast seeder and improves the quality and integrity of a polymer seed coating. Future work is now merited for evaluating how flash flaming winterfat seeds influence seed germination and plant survival in field conditions. If shown to be successful, flash flaming could prove to be a new technology that allows the planting of winterfat seeds on degraded rangelands.
Oral presentation and poster titles, abstracts, and authors from the Society for Range Management (SRM) Annual Meetings and Tradeshows, from 2013 forward.