Date: Feb 15, 2013 Author: press release Source: Company Data (
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February 15, 2013
Native Seedsters, Inc. recently placed a plot-sized seed harvester with the University of Illinois Department of Crop Sciences and Energy Biosciences Institute. This tractor-mounted harvester is to be used primarily for harvesting experimental lines of native prairie grasses as part of a biofuels research effort coordinated under Dr. DK Lee. Dr. Lee is raising and experimenting with varieties of prairie cordgrass, switchgrass, big bluestem, indiangrass and other potentially high yielding species. The Department hopes the Seedster will provide the ideal solution for harvesting seed for these future crops.
Researcher Dr. DK Lee is very excited about getting the machine in the field for next year's harvest. "We've relied on hand-harvest to collect our initial populations on very small plots; and we needed a way to collect more seed on larger plots in order to take our research to the next level." The Seedster is specially designed to pluck the grass seeds from these typically difficult to harvest species. This seed can be harvested without affecting the remainder of the plant leaving biomass for other uses such as grazing, haying, wildlife cover, or other purposes.
The Seedster is the only machine of its kind available--a high performance seed harvester for native grasses especially ‘chaffy' species not well harvested by combines. It comes in many sizes to fit various harvest situations. The Seedster unites harvest efficiency, robust durability, low maintenance, and convenient operability.
The important Seedster discovery and related R&D by NSI has been rewarded by 10 grants from the USDA SBIR program and the Montana Board of Research and Commercialization (MBRCT) to further develop and optimize the technology.
ABOUT Native Seedsters, Inc. Native Seedsters, Inc. is a harvest technology firm that designs, manufactures and markets the Arbuckle Native Seedster (the Seedster). Three models are on the market. The Seedster was developed especially for seed harvest of the many native grasses that are particularly difficult for a combine to harvest, such as switchgrass, the needlegrasses, needleandthread, big bluestem, little bluestem and all the native grass species with awns and appendages that challenge a combine. A wildflower Seedster is being designed and tested. Native Seedsters serves a nationwide market from its manufacturing and marketing base in Billings, MT.
